#well its not as ambitious as the study post i did-
Note
I love your Wintersberg smut fics 😭😭😭 Do you have any more fic drafts/ ideas that are bouncing around in your brain? I'd love to hear... Ethan getting his smart mouth shut up for once and getting fucked stupid is my favorite trope.
Aha, I take it you enjoyed Atypical Side-Effects? Does Medical Log count too? Either way, now I'm very amused that the last ask I got like this one was from someone who was into Ethan bantering his way through sex ‒ I mean, nice to know I'm appealing to multiple markets here! XD
I did post a list of stuff I had in the works back in September, but a lot of those have been checked off and posted since then, so maybe we're due for an update. There's not as much wintersberg on the current list as there was, but we'll see where it goes.
So, fic I have actually made progress on in the last month or two:
The second chapter of Atypical Side-Effects I've been promising everyone is with my beta now, though I cannot tell you there's much smut in this one, and it's currently second in the queue behind...
That post-RE7 Mithan fic where Mia actually gets to come clean that I mentioned in my last WIP post, which has somehow grown into a veritable monster (how tf did this thing break 15k I do not know), and is responsible for stalling progress on most everything else around it while it ate writing time. But it is at last (hopefully) done, and my beta is trying to sort out if it's ready to be unleashed on the world now.
As mentioned in a comment or two, I've also been working on a sequel to my Yuletide Lost Boys fic Pater Unfamilias. It's about halfway done now, I think?
In other misc fandom news, I've still got a couple of semi-cast-off bits of Deus Ex fic that came out of my Spare Parts anthology not-quite-finished (and which I've been promising myself I will totally get back to and finish sometime after that big one above was done). Whether they end up getting added to that story or whether I wind up posting them as their own things remains to be decided.
But back in Resi-land, I may have mentioned in that last post that I had part of a continuation of That One Where Heisenberg Follows Him Home, and that's one I'm still picking away at between other projects. Eventual Ethan/Mia/Heisenberg, just for a little variety, but it's got its teeth in me and definitely wants to go somewhere.
So overall, possibly not quite as much wintersberg as you might have hoped? Though I may have kind of promised someone there was still more of that one Beauty and the Beast wintersberg AU still very much in my plans. And one or two other things from that older list are still in the 'may get back to' pile too.
But if you’re asking about ideas that haven’t necessarily made the draft stage, well, I could always list you a few…
I have forever been toying with the idea of a post-canon Heisenberg-lives idea, where he ends up working for Chris’ outfit as a medical examiner who specialises in cutting apart whatever horrific BOWs have been brought back for study, and also in terrifying any hapless intern who so much as wanders into his lab. I mean, he’d be perfect for the job: plenty experienced in studying bioweapons, utterly un-squeamish about cutting up dead things, and as a bonus, completely qualified to defend himself whenever some ambitious specimen decides to get up again unexpectedly. Speaking of which, mundane AUs where Heisenberg’s some kind of medical examiner should really be more of a thing too (sure, mechanic works too, but is it really gross enough for him?)
Speaking of Heisenberg-lives possibilities, the idea of a universe where he survives (unbeknownst to our heroes) thanks to having bought a ‘life insurance policy’ from the Duke which involves him being resurrected via mould trickery is another one I’ve had forever. Did actually mention it in my last in-progress post (it’s the fairy tale idea titled simply ‘Koschei’), but haven’t really made any progress on it since.
Alternately, in a hypothetical Ethan-lives-Heisenberg-doesn’t AU, the idea of a Heisenberg who continues to haunt Ethan as a mould-ghost ala virtual-Eveline has to rank pretty high on the “has no-one does this? Because someone should totally do this”-scale. No really concrete ideas for this one though, so consider it very much free to a good home.
In more recent ideas, someone pointed out to me a little while ago the possibility that Heisenberg might be able to feel it when Ethan touches anything metal (which sure does cast Ethan’s own arsenal in an interesting light!) Don’t know if I’ll ever actually get around to doing something with this one, but I’ve definitely given this one some thought.
On a related note, look, I still say the idea of Heisenberg deciding to make Ethan appreciate his genius by trapping him in a massive soldat-orgy is one I want someone else to write for me, but I’ve definitely now spent enough time explaining it to certain people that I can’t deny having given it some real thought.
In other free-to-a-good-home ideas, has anyone ever written a decent little Eveline-wins-AU horror story, with Mia and Ethan stuck playing ‘families’ with her, and only conditionally conscious of what’s really going on? Because there just is not enough real horror or fic willing to treat Eveline as the horrific little monster she canonically is around this place.
And just for something completely different, some kind of surreal Mia/Zoe thing set during RE7, with Mia constantly shifting between different levels of awareness of what’s going on, how much she can remember, and what she thinks her relationship to Eveline really is preferably with some at least R-rated Mia/Zoe smut is another of those ideas I’ve been sitting on forever now.
...and I hope that about answers your question, because that's me about out. *g*
19 notes
·
View notes
Text
Lights Camera Drarry 2023 recs
Here are some of my favorite fics from @lcdrarry 2023. Listed in alphabetical order.
The Dying of the Light by camomiletea [20k]
Everyone dies. That’s just the way it is.
And then there are the unfortunate few who get promoted.
Palm Springs by KittyCargo [20k]
Harry collapsed into the chair next to him. “What is happening?”
“One of those infinite time loop situations.”
“What?!”
“You know. Yesterday is today. Today is today, tomorrow is today.”
“But how do I stop it? I don’t want tomorrow to be today. I want tomorrow to be tomorrow!”
“Yeah, that’s understandable.” Malfoy said calmly. “Do you like tacos?”
The Piano by shushu_yaoi_lj / @orange-peony [37k]
He arrives on a boat during a particularly stormy day.
Harry knew Astoria Greengrass had sent for a husband, someone to keep her company on the particularly dreary and dark winter days on this remote island. Harry didn’t know who it was she had arranged to be sent here. All he knew was that the weather was horrid today, and the Portkeys had never properly worked in this remote corner of the North Sea. The island was special, its magic working in odd and surprising ways.
The last person Harry expects to find on the beach is Draco Malfoy.
This Life Now by @nerdherderette [38k]
This close up, Draco can see the differences that have occurred over the years. Harry's hair is longer, although it's as unruly as ever; his forearms are well-muscled and decorated with ink; and there are small lines by his eyes that look like they would crinkle if he were smiling. Which, at this moment, he most definitely is not. He looks like he's worn the same clothes for three days and just rolled out of bed, yet Harry's so unfairly gorgeous it makes Draco's heart ache.
"What do you want, Draco?" Harry asks, his voice resigned.
The question snaps Draco out of his reverie. "A divorce," he proclaims as he opens his bag.
Welcome to Kreb by Nelween [24k]
Harry had always been obsessed with dragons. It was one of the reason he had studied them. And when the opportunity came to study draconic creatures in the wild on a deserted magical island with his mentor Charlie Weasley and his friend Neville Longbottom, why wouldn't he take it? If only he knew what he would encounter on his journey...
You've Got Owl Post by @slyth-princess [50k]
After discovering muggle romantic comedies during winter break, Pansy Parkinson and Luna Lovegood decide to launch an ambitious project called You've Got Owl Post which matches up students through an enchanted notebook so they can send letters to each other without knowing who is at the other end. It is an instant hit.
Harry, without his friends knowing, is one of the first to join. And he rapidly finds a kindred soul on the other side of the pages. In real life, however, he is once again plagued by Draco Malfoy. After fighting in class, McGonagall has had enough. So, as punishment and a lesson, she assigns them the running of that years dueling club. Everyone, including Harry and Draco, assumes it will be a disaster.
However, sometimes the people you think you know the best are the ones who can surprise you the most.
A story of letters, bets, friendship, love, forgiveness, and discovering who you really are.
I hope you enjoy these stories as much as I did!
20 notes
·
View notes
Text
{ KEDAR WILLIAMS-STIRLING, 19, CIS MALE, HE/HIM } Is that DARIUS PTOLEMY? A SOPHOMORE originally from PORTSMOUTH, NEW HAMPSHIRE, they decided to come to Ogden College to study BUSINESS on a ATHLETIC SCHOLARSHIP. They’re THE HOMEGROWN HERO on campus, but even they could get blamed for Greer’s disappearance.
pinterest | spotify | spotify+ (warning: bubblegum pop and the gummy bear song)
WHO?
full name: darius ezekiel ptolemy
birthday: october 25, 2003
pronouns: he/him
personality: exuberant. galvanizing. insatiable, imprudent, impetuous. insert other sat words he uses incorrectly to sound intelligent, which he is capable of being strictly in the contexts of sports and the pizza prices of every take-out place in a statewide vicinity. where he remains oblivious to his faults, darius thrives, and where he is forced to confront them, darius falters, snaps back with something stolen from the climax of an academy award loser, and goes back to thriving. he’s a personality, a figurehead, a trophy that needs to win itself more trophies. he thinks of getting people to like him, love him, hate him, focus on him, in any way, to be just as important as getting good grades. despite this, he’s anything but a hard partier, and claims designated driver like it’s his eternal duty. no better way to make people fall for you than by being a goody-two-shoes, right?
appearance: darius’s wardrobe is a miscellany of colors, thrown over a toned body with a meticulous dishevelment that takes more time in the morning than his three showers. his stature is asserted to be 6’0 but more accurately 5’10 with the help of high top sneakers, while its presence is mostly felt in him darting about campus with an agility only achievable through years of training and an abject inability to read maps properly.
WHAT?
sports & extracurriculars: tennis, diving & swimming, table tennis
tropes: homegrown hero. if anything’s to thank for his rise to the top and unaccountable social claustrophobia, it’s the prestigious town of portsmouth, new hampshire. | small name, big ego. but also, his success is sort of totally, entirely his doing. even if said success isn't quite that recognized outside of the country. | mr. vice guy. pride, lust, relating to holden caulfield, etc. he didn’t pay much attention in sunday school, honestly. | | attention whore. no point in doing anything if nobody’s around to post a fancam of it. | the nicknamer. because having a coherent contacts list is for losers.
relationship to greer: greer’s recruit.
Maybe it was because he was playing with some of the finest New Hampshire had to offer, or maybe it was because his attention was thoroughly divided between warming up and making the varsity team warm up to him, but Darius put more effort than ever into preparing himself for the life of an Ogden student. Specifically, the life of an Ogden student in Greer’s inner circle. He sought her time with a dogged determination that could only be dampened by explicit refusal, analyzing every letter of her posts (which were probably drafted by a PR team with more experience than a lifetime in the industry could merit, but a man could dream, and dream he did) as well as reading Cosmopolitan magazines behind his textbooks. Thus, freshman year was filled with professional, totally subtle butt-kissing and a whole lot of scampering around campus to spend his old rackets’ insurance on… whatever it was that Greer liked, anyways. He knew he wanted, needed, to become like her other friends, a shiny thing out of reach from anyone below their level, but how?
hobbies: cycling, yoga, taking selfies at inappropriate times
inspirations: randall “pink” floyd (dazed and confused), jeff sadecki (yellowjackets), mike jackson (the psmith novels), emily cooper (emily in paris, i promise i can explain)
WHY?
tl;dr: ambitious, discontent, and brilliant at acting like he’s neither of those, darius was born to the most mind-bogglingly middling family ever to throw their name in the genetic lottery in the most average neighborhood to have ever been built. his father an electrician and amateur pastor, his mother an insurance agent, and his grandmother a dispenser of morally dubious advice from her rocking chair, he took the burden of being an interesting person onto himself at a young age, idolizing the grand slam GOATs of television and desperate to become one of them. he and his coaches molded him into the underdog of his hometown’s dreams, but now that he’s been thrust into a world where people actually go places for vacation and expect better than the best of him, he doubts he can keep up without some elbow grease.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION…
connections: tba! aside from the suggested connections for the skeleton, however:
platonic. sports buddies, role models, study groups, fitness friends, ride or dies with a probable emphasis on dies
antagonistic. rivals on the court, mutual jealousy, academic opposition, bad influences, competitors in popularity
romantic. fleeting flirtationships, unrequited crushes, awkward dating app matches, friends with benefits, enemies with benefits
plot summaries: tba!
thread tracker: tba!
headcanons:
hates table tennis and sucks at it big time but continues playing under the incorrect pretense that he will improve. either misses the ball entirely or hits it with so much force that whichever surface the poor thing lands on will be permanently scarred.
most active social media is linkedin. he is aware that this is humiliating but mentally maintains that he will be nothing without an internship to one of the many, many insurance companies whose employees he texts night and day.
favorites:
books. adventures of huckleberry finn by mark twain, losers take all by david klass, a separate peace by john knowles, winning ugly by brad gilbert, looking for alaska by john green
movies. fast times at ridgemont high, napoleon dynamite, sunday school musical, big time adolescence, teenage mutant ninja turtles (1990)
music. lecrae, nirvana, daft punk, weathers, sue sylvester’s super bass cover
8 notes
·
View notes
Text
(TUMBLR ATE MY POST YESTERDAY NIGHT I HAD TO WRITE IT ALL AGAIN 😭)
Finally, finally drew him. Meryamun Ankhkemet. Believe me or not designing his headshape and face was a PAIN in the ass I had to erase it 3 times until finally figuring it out
Meryamun was born in Thebes, Egypt 5000 years ago within the royal palace. Son of the royal chief embalmer priest and a royal servant, he was a normal child with his own hobbies such as his love for food, drawing and playing music instruments, but he became ambitious early determined not to become a simple servant or embalmer. So he studied assidiously law and politics, without a pause, and played bootkissers with the pharaoh whenever he could which helped since in his mid 30's he became the royal vizir. As prime minister and supreme judge, his punishments and application of the law was cruel and merciless and as the old pharaoh became older and senile he started to become an éminence grise influencing him to fight in many wars, for Meryamun loved the art of war and just wished to go there himself fight one day. Force of enjoying his newfoundpower, the vizir became even more ambitious. The pharaoh had no son, only one daughter meant to become someone's Great Royal Spouse one day. So why not him ? His asskissing once again paid and he married her, Maya, but never touched her, finding her too young and uninteresting anyway. And when the pharaoh died of old age, he finally got what he wanted : he was crowned Meryamun I
He was a well appreciated pharaoh, but was unsympathetic to the judged making no exception and found any pretext to go to war against his neighbors, rejoicing at last in battle, first line, slicing up enemies, expanding the empire and enriching it with stoleb treasures. But one day, said treasure was the one too many. In a Mesopotamian temple dedicated to Lilitu, Meryamun went himself pick up the gold idom located in the middle, but in his excitement accidentally dropped it and broke it... unleashing from it a curse which instantly turned him in a monster, a vampire, one of the very first in history ! Out of wild instincts and blinded by the new sensations, he slaughtered everyone in the temple, his own soldiers included, until being stopped by religious artifacts which now burned and stopped him and he could be locked up a cage. By order of Maya, who got the opportunity to cancel their marriage and marry a new pharaoh and erase his name from history, he was sealed inside gold sarcophagus the ankh cross on it preventing him from opening it, and was forced to dry like a mummy and hibernate inside forever... or rather 1000 years, when thieves took the beautiful ruby ank and opened the sarcophagus, to see if the mummy inside had any jewelry. One of the thieves had cut himself by opening the lid, the drop fell on the dry mummy... who immediately opened its eyes, rose, massacred them all for the blood it had been deprived from for a millenium and rose back to its former lively looking shape. Back to his senses now he was filled with enough blood and still horrified at what he did and the time that flew, everyone he knew died some of them even because of himself and his hard earned titles were stripped off him, he was forgotten, alone, a monster, he even realized when trying to get out the sunlight burned him. The sun and holy religious signs, anything representing Ra, he who adored him and prayed him everyday ! Ra abandonned him, Ra had let this pagan goddess curse him, Ra now punished him. He now grew resentment towards him the solar disc above. After everything he did for him !? Now the vampire rejected the falcon god, started to adore his enemy Apep god of chaos who tries every night to kill him, and from now on, even to this day, still wishes the end of the Sun will happen as a revenge. Still, Egypt was not safe for him anymore, and it was with reluctance he had to leave
He travelled across the world, veing able to move only at night or on cloud or rainy days or by hiding inside boats or carriages. Even taking the time to discover before their official discoveries unknown continents. His resentment to mortals in general, the sun and classic religions grew as much as, in contrast, his knowledge did thanks to all the languages he learned and cultures he witnessed. He practised many new art styles, learned to play more instruments and even realized he actually loved cooking?! This felt so relaxing, why did only women do it in his time, all the time he missed! He little by little became a great cook with all the recipes he learned across the globe. But he also grew more powerful as a vampire mastering perfectly skills he now blessed he used to loathe and became a very respectable and feared member of the vampire community whenever he came across some. He was not fully bad either, able to feel pity and spare, but he did charm most people only for their blood or hunt them down, and the loneliness and all the riches he accumulated from all these millenia and long term financial tactics making him more powerful (but still on the run) were about to turn him into an actual villain... This was when he met who would later become his wife, whom I will draw and whose biography I will write one day : Yumi
On a hill in England, during a night of early 1420's, he saw a beautiful middle aged Asian woman he sneaked on and bit. But ew !!! Werewolf blood, that was disgusting ! And of course she did not like it and summoned her pack with a howl who beat him up for her, their leader. Werewolves, vampire enemies, great, what was his luck ! But sly and in a rush to survive, he tried to compromise and find a way to arrange them, noting how most of them looked wounded and tired. Indeed, they had been spotted and were on the run and had no shelter for a while, and whenever they tried to live in the woods it of course looked suspicious to humans. Since himself was getting more and more suspicious from being a lord living inside an old castle in ruins getting out only at night, he offered a symbiosis. They get his shelter, in exchange they help each other with hunts and they get outside for him at day as his emissaries and bodyguards. This was not pleasant for any of them, but survival was ar stake so Yumi agreed. For months the pack and the vampire cooexisted, mostly with a rivalry atmosphere not helped by the vampire lord who loved to taunt and snidely comment anything they did, for he loved to annoy their leader with whom a mutual heated anbeti respectful rivalry developped. Notably fueled with how he found her pretty and how some... FURRY feels awoke in him the first time he saw her turn into a werewolf, feelings he had repressed for millenia whenever he came across a muscley anthro lady (his first fapping session as a teen was at the thought of what Sekhmet could look like for which he had felt overly shameful afterwarend), so part of him infuriating her was so that she could turn into a werewolf, a bit like Kaeloo and Mr Cat's early relationship. That and because he did notice she blushed and get even more agitated whenever he alluded at things, which he found cute and amusing all while loving (deep down since his first reflex was to be offended of course) her temper and the way she put him back in his place, which was the first in millenia someone did not cower to him, and he did respect her leader ways and her intelligence. In short it was flirt, but a way that was meant to look like rivalry since both species were meant to be enemies and none of them wanted to forget that, too prideful. But force of coexisting, knowing each other, learning about each other, fighting or hunting together, saving each other, seeing each other during vulnerable moments and under new lights thanks to the things in common they found out they have and having deep or at least enjoyable conversations with similar morals and philosophies, they ended up falling deeply in love so much one night she was in heat, the first time since they had settled in his castle, they could no longer pretend and ran into each other's arms. At first wanting to keep it secret, it could not last hidden too long from other people with a good sense of smell, and when the danger was over and it was time for them to leave and for him to leave too since staying too long always ended up becoming too dangerous wherever he was, she decides to name her beta the new alpha and followed Meryamun
Since then, they never left each other's side and travelled the world together, falling more and more in love as the years went by, and marrying in the late 1490's in Venice under the made up bame Ankhkemet. Yumi was no Maya he never gave a fuck about who disgusted him at the idea of having to make her a hair one day for how younger she was and who always berated him and ended up betraying him. Yumi meant so much more to Meryamun. Trusting each other deeply and as passionate as ever no matter the years (to this day they almost always make love once a day MINIMUM), they hide and travel with their share of hunts and kills and get an amazed reputation in both species for being so open about their interspecies relationship. Still, the fact he now got her in his life apeases him and definitively stops him from becoming a villain and he becomes cooler and more open in general as well as now grateful to have become immortal or he would have lever met her. During early 17th century, they settled in US in a little village built by vampires and had their family manor be built. They were finally settled in ; sure nowadays, the village became a district in a large human town, but it is secluded and rarely mixes with a few visitors, so the secret is kept anyway. In fact they felt so comfortable and sure to be 100% safe they made 2 children quite recently, Absinthe and Asmar
Nowadays, he is a billionaire from millenia of harvesting treasures known as Lord Meryamun Ankhkemet and is a famous chef who owns the fanciest restaurant in town. Nobody knows the family is paranormal, they just know they are discrete celebrities rarely making public appearances outside of work and he never gives any interview or accepts to pose for pics since he doesn't appear on pictures, but is generally well appreciated since he gives a lot for the community. He is a good boss who pays and treats well his employees and butler, he pampers his cat Nedjem, he has friends he is a little snobbish and innocently disdainful or menacing (he never had friends before so he doesn't know much how to interact) to but does love them and is faithful and helpful, he is a good caring loving dad who trains his daughter since she has a bigger vampire side and he adores his wife with whom he's almost in a symbiosis à la Morticia and Gomez mixed with Madame Pandora and Captain of the Dead. But that aside he can also be very cold and heartless when you don't matter to him, not minding killing you for blood or if you know his secret (in fact in a general sense he and Yumi are glad to live in a big town in whoch they are popular... so that the "livestock" is easy to collect), sometimes financing shady but legal business like wars since he ALWAYS loved wars, and still adores Apep as well as other gods in a secondary adoration anf dreams to destroy the sun and overthrow power in Egypt to return as its eternal pharaoh. Nevertheless, he is very much happy in life with his family, friends, job and hobbies which holds him back enough from having these thoughts as mere fantasies
#moi#drawing#FFFUUU-#tumblr#post#the ankhkemets#meryamun ankhkemet#black and white#ocs#smoke#cigarette#cigarette holder
17 notes
·
View notes
Text
GUYS I HAVE TO TELL YOU ABOUT MY. MY OLD PSYCHONAUTS OC. RIGHT NOW
his name is
philbert funk.
this is him right here in fact. it's very old art but i still like it. there will be even more art of him later in the post...
click the read more to learn his JUICY backstory ok?
ahhhh good to see u. so glad ur interested in my philbert let me tell u about him.
PHILBERT!!! FUNK!!!! was an employee at psychonauts hq, and a hell of a good one at that. he was an inventor slash researcher, like otto mentalis, who he even got to work with on occasion. he'd invent psychic gadgets to enhance existing powers - things like telekinesis extender headbands that let you pick up more objects at once or telepathy mufflers shaped like earmuffs to get some peace and quiet without having to stick around in an isolation chamber (you can guess who that one was for). he was a quick learner and a hard worker who refused to let ANY job of his turn out less than perfect. real high standards - maybe worryingly so. he skipped a LOT of sleep to keep up his momentum. he was ambitious, VERY ambitious, and liked to test the limits of both his inventions and himself.
problem is, when you make overperforming your baseline, people expect a hell of a lot more out of you than they should - and most certainly more than he could deliver. the popularity his work earned him turned out to be more of a curse than a blessing as he worked himself to the bone trying to invent more and more impressive things to win approval again and again. what started out as a simple curiosity and love for science turned into the desperate need to keep things up lest he disappoint everyone.
philbert funk flew too close to the sun.
one of his greatest fascinations was animal telepathy - he had none. he'd always been, admittedly, BURNINGLY jealous of those who could speak with animals, as zoology was a special interest of his for...well, forever. so the idea occurred: what if there was a way to fabricate the power by making your dna more compatible with the animal you want to communicate with? if your brain chemistry is altered to be more similar, maybe it would be easier to make the connection for those who don't do so naturally, like himself. he creates a big elaborate machine meant to intertwine your dna with an animal by having it read the animal's pattern and then manipulating your dna to its shape. around summer 1981 he test runs it in front of everyone in a fancy tech demo using a goat, his favorite animal!
IT DOES NOT .... go well.
he comes out with a goat face, the goat comes out with a HUMAN FACE, both are in critical condition cause hello it's a machine that TWISTS YOUR DNA, everyone freaks. phil is immediately written off as a danger to himself and others and fired as soon as he's stable enough to leave the infirmary. blacklisted too. he's made to leave and no one sees him again....
.....UNTIL!!!!!!!
couple years later, now 1983 (just a few months after raz gets into the biz officially), otto sends raz on a little fetch quest to an old building on the edge of the woods - it used to be a facility for testing gadgets or scientific studies or whatever but it went out of commission due to budget cuts shortly after phil was fired and hasn't been touched since. it's a cut and dry mission. go find the place, get the tools otto wanted, come back. right?
ummm. wrong. cause tools aren't the only thing in there.
that's right babey. the funkatron has been hiding out in there for YEARS! two of them. to be precise. living off scraps and whatever he can find in the woods, all to stay and try to fix his machine so he can turn himself and poor greff normal again, hoping it would be enough for the psychonauts to forgive him and maybe, just maybe, take him back. and GOD does he look ROUGH!!!!
like the pic implies he doesn't actually feel all that messed up about what he did to himself (though he does feel bad for greff -- he gave that thing a human consciousness and now it has to be self aware forever) cause like. hey! it didn't go exactly as planned but it was one hell of a scientific feat. he just wishes he hadn't been so stupid and reckless; he lost the respect of his compatriots and idols AND lost his dream job, and rightfully so.
despite not outwardly showing a lot of guilt (still being able to be lighthearted about it and all), raz sees for himself that poor phil's mind is a MESS. it's a courtroom and the same hearing happens over and over and over. prosecution shows off the memories of the day of the machine demo as evidence, no one's there to defend him, he admits guilt, repeat cycle. the judge always gives him a chance to say something else but he ALWAYS pleads guilty. he is, but hanging onto the guilt forever isn't gonna help anyone so raz has to jump in and be his defense lawyer and do a sick phoenix wright like maneuver to finally convince him to break the cycle, pointing out that while he IS at fault he's not helping anything by dwelling on it and he needs to move on. raz finally gets philbert out of his............... funk B) IM the funniest guy on earth it's me.
raz does a lot of convincing and phil pulls off his best puppy eyes and it ALMOST doesn't work but greff steps in to vouch for him (he DID dedicate the past two years of his life just to try and help it) and hq agrees to take him back and get him on a rehab and therapy program since...he. hasn't talked to any human beings in 2 years he needs a little re-acclimating. while he's getting used to normal life again he gains some new interests like gardening! and crochet! since they don't really want him engineering again quiiiiite yet... but i think he's welcomed back after an initial period of wariness and he works hard to earn back people's trust and finally keeps a healthy work life balance 😋 and from then on he joins the ranks of the psychonauts' cool old guy club
THAT is my philbert story... thank you oh so much for listening. i just remembered about him today and i got so excited. psychonauts ocs are oh so much fun
#character art#digital art#illustration#digital illustration#oc art#character design#original character#psychonauts#psychonauts 2#psychonauts oc#psychonauts fanart#azazel's art gallery#long post#oc lore
7 notes
·
View notes
Text
January 8th
Hi, I’m back (almost started with hi guys, then remembered I have no followers lmao). It's been a week since I posted last, and I think I'm going to start posting every Sunday at 9:30 PM, essentially right before I go to bed. To be honest I don't know how long I’m going to be able to keep that schedule up, I might be taking on too much, but hey, we shall see, things change all the time.
In the week thats passed, not too much has happened. School started back up on the second, unfortunately, and I’m already drained. Ever since my visit to the hospital, everything is so much more draining than before. I hope eventually I’m able to pick myself back up from this burnout, but apparently, the time it takes to recover from burnout is about 3-5 years. I don't have 3-5 years to heal from all this lol.
We had a project due the day after we came back to my AP Lit class, our personal portfolio. I had a lot of fun writing it over the semester, but I also hated it. It took me through a lot of emotions and lore related to my past. I talked about my mom, my most recent failed relationship, and my failed friendships, all of which made me sad. I also talked about my grandma though, and my wonderful stepmom, so I think overall it kinda works out in a way. I think the worst part was putting the pictures into the binder. Pictures of my biological mom (you'll hear about her eventually) as well as pictures of my grandma. I may have been a little petty and attacked my ex in the portfolio, which is funny considering hes in that class and everyone can read them. I wonder if he will approach me about it, I doubt it, he's kind of a coward.
On a much more positive note, things have become slightly more serious with this guy I’m talking to. Some might say it is FAR too soon to be talking to another guy fresh out of a relationship, but it’s been over a month now since the last one, and I’m too much of an all-or-nothing person to be hurt by one guy for too long. Or girl. I just struggle with attachment stuff. ANYWAYS. He’s way different than any guy I've ever talked to, and tbh, its refreshing. He's kind and gentle, but also ambitious and driven. It's something I've always wanted in a partner. I really hope it goes somewhere because he is genuinely so amazing lol.
This week in the mental health section we have…journaling. Now I know a lot of people just say journal to get your feelings out there but people don't actually talk about the psychology behind journaling, the benefits of it, and WHY it helps. I know this is a pretty basic thing to talk about but its my first post with this little section added so bear with me, it's fine.
There are a lot of different ways to journal and different kinds of journaling, and it really doesn't matter which one you do, it varies on your needs and what you’re trying to prioritize. I personally bullet journal and have another separate journal for my thoughts and feelings. So a lot of people wonder how journaling can actually be beneficial and I did a lil bit of research and fouuuuund… depending on the kind of journaling you do, it can be either just a release of emotions, it can help track symptoms of mental illness (or physical illness if you suffer from medical conditions, you can track if it’s getting worse or not, especially helpful in cases of people with chronic illness, but again, it varies person to person). Journaling can even help to identify negative self-talk that you may do unknowingly, and you can put in the work to change those negative thoughts into something positive. (All of this information is from a study posted by the University of Rochester Medical Center).
So to focus on the benefits of regular (“regular”) journaling, I’m mostly just going to talk about how it can be done and what to recognize in your journal entries (ITS ALWAYS HELPFUL TO GO BACK AND REREAD THEM EVEN IF IT HURTS, you can see how far you've come, and see what’s changed and whats benefited you throughout your writing journey). Journaling can be instrumental in the progression towards certain goals, as it is an internal reflection, slightly different from a diary, which can be defined as writing about the events of a day, and is mostly a daily thing. Journaling doesn't have to be a daily thing, it can be something you do more often when you’re having a rough time, with long entries full of crossed-out words and scribbles, versus the times you’re doing okay and when the entries are shorter and the words are neater. Either way, journaling is very good for self-reflection, helping you identify triggers and other things that may cause you any amount of emotional stress.
I think my favorite kind of journaling is bullet journaling, which I’ve only been doing for a short while but it’s very different from my thoughts and feelings journal. My bullet journal is something I use to keep track of assignments and also my habits, my reading, and things I've watched, I might start using it to track screen time. I also use it to track the story I’ve begun and this blog as well. It’s becoming very helpful when it comes to the planning of my future and the progression of my goals. I personally never found my thoughts and feelings journal to be very helpful when it came to goal progression, but it’s different for everyone.
One of the best parts of a bullet journal is the creative freedom that comes with it, of course, that’s not for everyone, and some people may simply choose a more minimalistic setup, or they may just not bullet journal at all, but that’s seriously one of the most therapeutic parts. Its a very chill process, I personally stole my setup from a YouTuber who I like, so it’s not my own creativity, but thats something Id like to do someday.
Anyway, that wraps up this week's post, we shall see how this does, I might mess around with the length of posts, as this one got pretty long. See you next Sunday :)
#beginner writer#wattpad#wattpad story#writers on tumblr#journal#journaling#journal entry#mental health#positive mental attitude#coping skills#coping mechanism
1 note
·
View note
Text
Weekly Challenge 5: Return to Shakespeare
Runtime: 05th June - 11th June '23.
Summary: This week was rough.
Monday, the first day, was almost in its entirety reserved for something I called "study organization" - which basically means that I took a whole day off just to organize the stuyding of Shakespeare for the remainder of the week. Yikes. 🤗
However, that wasn't that bad as the planning itself, which was only vaugely thought out and then somewhat poorly executed. In a nutshell, I decided to cover all of the Shakespeare's history plays (two tetralogies only) by the end of the week and the 'cover' part included: reading the plays, understanding all the nuances surrounding their themes, characters, plots etc. and also knowing to/rehearsing how to speak about all the exam questions that include history plays. And while my planning stage was ambitious, I soon realized that I overlooked in it certain things like time management, time organization and even time prediction (predicting how much I can do in specific time frame).
So, what was the natural outcome of that oversight, one might ask? Well, I have read only two plays out of planned five by the end of the week: Henry V (Wed) and 1 Henry VI (Fri-Sat). I also covered 2 Henry VI (Sun), but I didn't "read" it by myself: I rather followed the summary of certain professor from youtube who was posting the video summaries of Shakespeare's plays for his students and whom I discovered completely by accident. (It seems I indirectly became one of them lol.) And while he really did help me understand the play in its entirety, as it felt like I did read it with him in a way, I did not count it as a "read" one. After all, it was only indirectly read.
Fast forward to Wednesday, when I decided to start studying: I quickly realized that I ain't gonna do it all by the self-imposed deadline, so I narrowed the task down to only cover first tetralogy by the end... and even that was only half-done (and started from the end of the second tetralogy 😬).
So, the lessons I can now take out of this are to not be overly ambitious in the future, while working more on the practical side of things. The sides need to be evened a little bit. Smoothe the wrinkles. Iron the edges.
I made a pause on Thursday, for study summary.
Apart from this main, overarching task, that run from end to end of my personal weeks, binding it in a way, like a spine - there are other things I did throughout the week. Somewhat less important tasks, but still important to be mentioned here. Let's call them 'tasks of the second order.'
These include:
💫 going to the post office and sending money to my University on the name of 'exam registration' on Monday. (If someone knows the proper English terms for these, feel free to let me know in the comments.)
💫 going to a neighboring city to participate in my penultimate class of the year and of my entire undergraduate studies! Lecture: Less Belles Sours. (Interesting.) False bomb alarm on bus station and the University: bus redirected. Taxi lesson: to order it earlier next time upon arrival(i.e. from the bus). Rainy day. (Tuesday)
💫 registering for the exam I wanted to do at the end of this June (Shakespeare), after my money was safely deposited to my student e-account. Now I could properly start studying. (Wednesday) Aside: this late-night last-minute exam registrations are now like a tradition of sort, though this time at least I wasn't late as usual.
💫 renewing my monthly dose of medications and picking up my new headphones from a store (the old ones went defunct, so I expected the new ones for a while - turned out they were ready for taking for several days already). Also, mowing the grass around the house. (Thursday)
Some peculiar experiences I had during some of these:
👉 while in the post office, I felt parts of my mind awakening and becoming sharper. Of course, whenever I think about my mind, it's usually in the terms of "right and left brain parts." So, it was the left part of the brain that was suddenly awoken. Alas, it was short-lived.
👉 I finally managed to register my exams on time! after countless episodes when my payments was delayed, which meant my registering also needed to be delayed, which meant I needed to embarass myself, time after time, with sending the explanatory mails to student offices. So, I had an improvement this time!
Inovation I introduced this week: Mind Decluttering. (Starting from Wednesday.)
Namely, after realizing that my phone was negatively affecting my overall mental health for some time (the almost incesant stream of information was flooding my very passive and unproductive brain on a daily basis), I decided it is a time to take a pause from it for a while. In a way, I needed to re-learn how to use it, so that it stops being detrimental factor in my life and starts being something that will contribute to my well being. In short, I needed to stop being its slave and learn how to take a role of its master. I should make it my friend, not my foe.
So I decided to introduce the "no phone" zone to my day, usually the seven hours during the main part of day: 12pm - 07pm. During this time, the phone would be either turned off or switched to the "airplane/flight mode" and I would dedicate my time to something productive, instead off aimlessly using the phone. I named this process of filtering the unneccessary information out of my brain and focusing on the important - "Mind Decluttering."
Slightly embarrassing, but important milestone: I regularly brushed my teeth in a succession that hasn't stopped till this day, starting on Wednesday this week. (Maybe this can read as unusual to someone who never grossly neglected themselves like me during their days of depression, but that is one thing that depression can do to you.)
0 notes
Note
Hi there 💕 any thoughts on Venus in Taurus opposite Mars in Scorpio ? (Venus in the 11th and Mars in the 5th) hope you have a good day !
Hi! Thank you so much I hope you have a great day as well! I'm sorry it took me so long to get to this. Also sorry for any typos!
Venus in Taurus:
dependable
relaxed (potentially lazy)
cautious or reserved
potentially touchy (with people they're comfortable with)
demanding (which could lead to possessiveness or jealousy)
Venus in the 11th House:
curious
appreciates all types of people and friendships
might confuse love with any type of relationship
a bit of a chameleon (can change depending on who they're with)
can be a bit naive
Mars in Scorpio:
observant/intuitive and careful
disciplined
loyal
can be obsessive and jealous
proactive
Mars in the 5th House:
competitive
active (constant need to do something)
passionate
prideful
can be selfish
Venus Opposite Mars:
potentially hypersensitive/experience emotions intensely
impatient with relationships (any type but mostly romantic)
can be distrustful
may confuse sexual attraction for love
might have had a turbulent childhood
The way I think Taurus Venus in the 11th house would play out would be as someone who truly appreciates the growth in relationships (all kinds). Taurus Venus might make someone truly crave security because that's what provides them comfort whether it be following through on plans, having a set study schedule, or even something as small as always being punctual. They might truly find so much joy in keeping to tasks that others might find mundane because it is something they know they can count on (kinda like a security blanket). This also makes them a bit cautious in how they approach life and people they don't really want to rock the boat. And because this is what they want it is what they'll give, specifically to their friends/loved ones because of its 11th house placement. Venus in Taurus might also make someone a bit touchy. They're not afraid to show physical affection and combine that with the 11th house you can get a true social butterfly. This is someone who is filled with so much curiosity that they might just want to get to know as many people as possible and befriend them. Well if they find them entertaining. This placement may make someone want to only look at the good in people which could make them a bit naive. They may focus so much on the good qualities of people that they may not see some red flags or might just choose to ignore them and could potentially lead to them getting the wrong impression of someone.
Now Scorpio Mars makes for someone who is intuitive, ambitious and extremely strong willed. It makes for an individual who once they've set their mind to something they will accomplish what they've set out to do. They're also not the type to just sit idly by they will get things done. With this placement in the 5th house as well could make for someone who constantly needs to be involved in something. Whether it be immersed in a hobby or sport or maybe even constantly wanting to learn something new. People with these placements are passionate and a bit hedonistic (only a bit!) in that they might forget about others as they try to satisfy their want for entertainment, fun and pleasure. This can make them a bit selfish in any aspect of their lives especially with scorpio involved. The easiest example would be a relationship (not only romantic), if they commit to you then it is you and them against the world, they will stick by you, but if they feel like you aren't on their level it might hurt their pride and affect their loyalty to you. They just want to feel that you appreciate and value them the way they do you.
Venus opposite Mars I feel ultimately points to a struggle with finding the balance between love, beauty, values (venus) and passion, sexuality, anger, and our desires (mars). It often might seem like they're at war with each other. Someone might feel like they themselves don't even really know what they want. The way they experience emotions might be extremely intense for them and could sometimes feel overwhelming and even unbearable because they might be feeling like they're being pulled into two different directions. They might even confuse sexual attraction for love especially when taking into account the above placements. These placements are quite different. One side craves security, dependability, and friendship and the love that comes from that. While the other side is still a bit cautious it's much more impulsive, active and aggressive in its approach to achieving what they want. I wont touch upon the childhood aspect of this placement too much because everyone's family dynamic is different, but I did want to mention it because it did pop up quite a bit when I was looking into this aspect.
I ultimately think this is someone who truly loves having fun with their friends and meeting new people, but has only a small group of people they truly confide in. They might be the people who might fall in love for people they're friends with because that's ultimately what they want is a friend more than a lover, but also doesn't truly know who they want to be with because they also want that passionate love.
That's it for this post! Again I'm really sorry it took me so long to get to this I've been quite busy lately. Please remember I'm not a professional astrologer this is just how I interpret things. I hope you all enjoyed this and let me know if anyone resonates with any part of this!
- S 🤍
#astrology#astro observations#astrology community#natal chart#birth chart#astrology placements#venus aspects#mars aspects#taurus venus#scorpio mars#11th house#5th house#natal aspects#astro notes#taurus#scorpio#venus opposite mars
101 notes
·
View notes
Text
Anonymous asked: I loved your fantastic account of the battle of Waterloo and how each nation came to define the rest of the century for all the European countries in different ways. However what are your thoughts about the battle itself? Did Wellington win it or did Napoleon lose it? What were the turning points that you think determined the fate of the battle?
Thank you for reading and liking my previous post on Waterloo. I did heavily lean into studying ancient classical warfare when I was studying Classics but I only got into Napoleonic warfare because of a father who was (and still remains) big Napoleonic warfare military enthusiast. Through his keen eyes as a former serving military man, I also looked at the battle as a soldier might as well putting on my academic critical thinking cap. It’s a popular parlour game not just in Sandhurst but also in the officers’ mess (where those regiments actually fought at Waterloo) and around dinner tables - in my experience anyway.
I’ve always seen such speculative and counterfactual questions as an amusing diversion. I’ve never seriously looked at the detail until I came to France and unexpectedly interacted with Napoleonic scholars as well as soldiers (the cultured and historically well read ones at least) that forced me to think more about it. I’ve always been of the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived in time to save Wellington’ school; and this was always enough to get me by in any conversation.
But my vanity was stung by interacting with one of my downstairs neighbours, a high decorated retired army general, with whom I played a weekly game of chess over a glass of wine during the Covid lockdown in Paris. He didn’t spare me as he knew so much detail about the battle. But a typical failing of French thinking is to pontificate around generalities rather than specific reasons. So for him it came down to pooh-poohing the generalship of Wellington (the rain saved him) and lauding the emperor (he had haemorrhoids and thus a bad day at the office). So rain and haemorrhoids were the decisive factors in determining the outcome of the battle of Waterloo.
It was clear I had to raise my game. So I’ve been reading more when I could.
I had recently finished reading a wonderful book ‘The Longest Afternoon: The 400 Men Who Decided the Battle of Waterloo’ by the Cambridge historian Brendan Simms. The book came out in 2015 but it’s been lying on my shelf for these past few years until I actually took this slim book to read on my one of my business trips.
The idea behind this short book is so superbly useful. It places to one side the huge, cinematic panorama of history and instead concentrates on one particular farmhouse, on one particular day: 18 June 1815. History is vivified, lifts itself off the page and into the mind, when a historian of Brendan Simm’s immense stature zooms in on the details - and here the details are compelling.
For the course of one day, 400 soldiers, wet, cold, in some cases hungover, who had bivouacked for the night in an abandoned farmhouse at La Haye Sainte, near a crucially strategic crossroads, found themselves staring down the massed barrels of Napoleon’s vanguard – and held them off. On June 18, 1815, Wellington established his position and sent one battalion and part of a second to the farmhouse under the command of Major Baring. Napoléon’s initial attack was a direct assault that surrounded the house and came near to breaking Wellington’s line; but it held, and the legendary charge of two British heavy cavalry brigades drove back the French.
This is a detailed account of the defence of La Haye Sainte, a walled stone farmhouse forward of Wellington’s centre. Its defenders were the King’s German Legion, which (despite the British army’s penchant for oddball names) was genuinely German. Britain harboured many German expatriates who detested Napoléon, a number augmented in 1803 when he occupied Hanover and disbanded its army. That very year two ambitious officers recruited the first members of the King’s German Legion, which grew into a corps of some 14,000 men and served with distinction at Copenhagen, Walcheren and in Spain before its apotheosis at Waterloo.
Ordered to capture the farmhouse, Marshal Michel Ney - commanding Napoléon’s left wing - obeyed but became preoccupied with his famously unsuccessful cavalry attack. Reminded of the order two hours later, he dispatched infantry that reached the house and set it on fire. The men inside controlled the blaze and continued to fight until Ney took personal charge of a furious assault that succeeded only when the defenders ran out of ammunition and withdrew, having held out for six hours. Had they not defended it so stoutly and if the farm had fallen any sooner then Napoleon would have been able to get at Wellington’s troops before his Prussian reinforcements arrived, and in all likelihood Waterloo would have been a French victory instead; it would now be the name of a train station in Paris rather than London.
I doubt there is a definitive answer to this question which is why certain people love arguing about it because it’s so open ended in terms of cause and effect. You can pick on any episodic event and hail that as the decisive turning point. It’s one reason why we are so fortunate to have so many well researched history books on the battle of Waterloo to replenish the issues for a newer generation to argue with past generations.
If I were to go beyond the ‘if the Prussians hadn’t arrived to save Wellington’ line then I would point to ten decisive turning points which in themselves might not have changed the outcome but taken together certainly influenced the final outcome of one of the most important and iconic battles in history.
Napoleon gives Marshal Davout a desk job
6 June 1815 – All commanders need a good chief of staff to ensure that their intentions are translated into clear orders. Unfortunately for Napoleon – as what is arguably one of the most decisive battles in European history loomed – his trusted chief of staff, Marshal Berthier, was no longer available. Berthier had sworn an oath of loyalty to Louis XVIII – and then fallen to his death from a window – so the job was given to Marshal Soult.
Soult was an experienced field commander but he was certainly no Berthier. Napoleon’s two main field commanders were also far from ideal. Emmanuel Grouchy had little experience of independent command. Michel Ney’s heroic command of the French rear-guard during the retreat from Moscow led Napoleon to dub him “the bravest of the brave”, but by 1815 he was clearly burnt out.
Worse still, when on 6 June Napoleon ordered his generals to assemble with their troops on the Belgian border he chose to leave behind Louis-Nicolas Davout, his ‘Iron Marshal’, as minister of war. The emperor needed someone loyal to oversee affairs at home but the decision not to take with him the ablest general at his disposal would deprive him of the one commander who might have made a difference.
Constant Rebecque ignores orders
15 June – In June 1815 Napoleon assembled 120,000 men on the Belgian border. Opposing him were 115,000 Prussians under Field Marshal Blücher and an allied force of about 93,000 men under Wellington. Faced with such odds, Napoleon’s best chance of victory was to get his army between his two enemies and defeat one before turning on the other. On 15 June his army crossed the frontier at Charleroi and headed straight for the gap between the two allied armies.
Wellington was taken completely by surprise: “Napoleon has humbugged me” he said. Uncertain what Napoleon’s intentions were, he ordered his army to concentrate around Nivelles, over 12 miles away from the Prussian position at Ligny. This would have left the two allied armies dangerously separated but fortunately for Wellington, a staff officer in the Dutch army, Baron Constant Rebecque, understood what was actually needed. He disregarded Wellington’s order and instead sent a force to occupy the key crossroads of Quatre Bras, much nearer to the Prussians.
D’Erlon misses the show
16 June – Two battles were fought on 16 June. While Marshal Ney took on Wellington’s army as it hurriedly tried to concentrate around Quatre Bras, Napoleon led the main French force against the Prussians at Ligny. Blücher’s inexperienced Prussians were given a severe mauling but despite this they managed to fall back in relatively good order.
This was partly due to a disastrous mix-up on the part of the French. Confusion over orders saw General D’Erlon’s corps instructed to leave Ney’s army at Quatre Bras and join the fighting at Ligny only to be recalled as soon as they got there. The result was that 16,000 Frenchmen who could have intervened decisively actually took part in neither battle.
Blücher stays in touch
17 June – Wellington succeeded in beating back Ney at Quatre Bras but Blücher’s defeat left the British general with a large French army on his eastern flank. He was forced to fall back northwards towards Brussels. The Prussians were retreating as well. Normally a retreating army tries to withdraw along its lines of communication (ie the route back to its base). Had the Prussians done this they would have headed eastwards. The two allied armies would then have been even further apart and Wellington would have been overwhelmed. But instead of doing that, the Prussians retreated northwards towards Wavre. It was to be a crucial move. The two allied armies stayed in contact and on 17 June Wellington was able to fall back to the ridge at Mont St Jean, and prepare to make a stand there until Blücher’s Prussians could come to his aid.
The weather takes a hand
17 June – The night before the battle was marked by a thunderstorm of biblical proportions. Rain lashed down, turning roads into quagmires and trampled fields into seas of mud.
It was a night of tremendous rain and cloudbursts. Wellington said that even in the monsoons in India, he’d never known rain like it. To wake up cold and damp, wet and terrified, then you have this slaughter in a very small space. By evening there were over 200,000 men struggling to kill each other within four square miles.
Private Wheeler of the 51st Regiment later wrote: “The ground was too wet to lie down… the water ran in streams from the cuffs of our Jackets… We had one consolation, we knew that the enemy were in the same plight.” Wheeler was right of course – the rain would inconvenience all three armies, not least the Prussians as they struggled along narrow country lanes to link up with Wellington.
It’s often said that Napoleon delayed starting the battle in order to allow the ground to dry out but the chief cause of the delay was probably the need to allow his units, many of whom had bivouacked some distance away, to take up their allotted places. Napoleon enjoyed a considerable advantage in artillery at Waterloo but this was lessened by the fact that the mud made it difficult to move his guns around and that cannonballs, normally designed to bounce along until they hit something, or someone, often disappeared harmlessly into the soggy ground.
Macdonnell closes the gates
11:30am, 18 June – On 18 June the two armies prepared to do battle. Most of Wellington’s troops were sheltered from enemy fire on the reverse slope of the Mont St Jean ridge. The position was protected by three important outposts: a group of farms to the left, the farm of La Haye Sainte in front and the farmhouse of Hougoumont to the right.
At about 11.30am the French launched their first attack – an assault on Hougoumont. This soon developed into a battle within a battle as the French threw in ever more men in a bid to capture the vital chateau. They nearly succeeded: led by a giant officer nicknamed ‘the Smasher’, a group of French soldiers worked their way round to the rear of the chateau, forced open its north gate and burst inside.
James Macdonnell, the garrison commander, acted quickly. He gathered a group of men and they heaved the gate shut again. The French inside the chateau were then hunted down and killed. Only a young drummer boy was spared. Hougoumont was to remain in allied hands all day and Wellington later commented that the entire result of the battle depended on the closing of those gates.
Ney loses his head after his cavalry founders
1.30pm – The infantry of D’Erlon’s corps finally saw action as they attacked the left wing of Wellington’s army. As they reached the crest of the ridge they were met by the infantry of Sir Thomas Picton’s division. Picton, a foul-mouthed Welshman who rode into battle in a civilian coat and round-brimmed hat, was shot dead but his men stopped the French, who were then driven back by Wellington’s cavalry.
The next major French attack was very different. Ney unleashed his cavalry in a mass frontal attack, and thousands of Napoleon’s famous cuirassiers – big men in steel breastplates riding big horses – thundered up the hill. But Wellington’s infantry stayed calm. Forming squares, they presented in all directions a hedge of bayonets that no horse could be made to charge.
Ney needed to call the cavalry off or support them with infantry but he lost his head and threw more horsemen into the fray. When he abandoned these fruitless attacks, Wellington’s line was still unbroken, two hours had been wasted, and the Prussians were arriving in force.
The Prussians arrive
4.30pm – Blücher had promised to come to Wellington’s aid, and kept his word. Napoleon had detached nearly a third of his army under Grouchy to prevent the Prussians joining up with Wellington but Grouchy failed to do this and, by mid-afternoon, the first Prussian units were in action on the battlefield.
At about 4.30pm they launched their first attack upon the key village of Plancenoit near the rear of Napoleon’s main position. This savage battle would rage for over three hours. Faced with this, Napoleon was forced to send many of his remaining reserves to shore up his position – leaving him with precious few troops to exploit any success his troops might enjoy against Wellington.
Napoleon says no, and von Zeithen turns back
6.30pm – At about 6.30pm the French captured La Haye Sainte. Posting artillery and skirmishers around the farm, they unleashed a storm of shot, shell and musketry into Wellington’s exposed centre. The regiments there suffered horrendous casualties, but Wellington’s line held – just.
Ney asked for reinforcements to press home his advantage but Napoleon refused. Instead he sent troops to recapture Plancenoit which had just fallen to the Prussians. Von Zeiten’s Prussian I Corps arrived on the scene. These much-needed reinforcements were set to join Wellington when a Prussian aide de camp rode up with an order from Blücher instructing them to head south and support his troops at Plancenoit. Von Zeiten obeyed. Realising that Von Zeiten’s troops were desperately needed on the ridge, Baron von Müffling, Wellington’s Prussian liaison officer, galloped after Von Zeiten and pleaded with him to ignore this new order and stick to the original plan. The Prussian general turned back and took his place on Wellington’s left, enabling the duke to shift troops over to reinforce his crumbling centre. The crisis had passed.
Napoleon’s last roll of the dice ends in panic
7.30pm – With Plancenoit back in French hands the stage was set for the final act in the drama. At about 7.30pm Napoleon unleashed his elite imperial guard in a last desperate bid for victory. But it was too late – they were hopelessly outnumbered and Wellington was ready for them. His own troops had been sheltering from the French fire by lying down but when the two large columns of French guardsmen reached the crest of the ridge Wellington ordered his own guards to stand up. One British guardsman describes the scene: “Whether it was (our) sudden appearance so near to them, or the tremendously heavy fire we threw into them but La Garde, who had never previously failed in an attack, suddenly stopped.”
Meanwhile Sir John Colborne of the 52nd Light Infantry wheeled his regiment round to attack the flank of the first French column while General Chasse ordered his Dutch and Belgian troops forward against the other. Soon both French columns had withered away under the deadly fire. Their defeat led to widespread panic in the French army: amid cries of “La Garde recule” (“the Guard is retreating”) it dissolved into a disorderly retreat mercilessly harried by the Prussians. “The nearest-run thing you ever saw in your life,” as Wellington described the battle, was over.
This isn’t an exhaustive list but it will do.
Waterloo was a watershed moment for Europe, and indeed the world. The end of the Napoleonic Wars heralded a peace in Europe which was not broken until the outbreak of World War One in 1914. In the century following the Battle of Waterloo an increased respect developed for the figure of the soldier. True the Battle became mythologised in the nineteenth century and is now embedded in our cultural memory as one of the great British success stories.
We still celebrate Waterloo because it was a great British victory - even if we had a little bit of help from the Prussians. It embodied the British bulldog spirit and marked the moment we finally overcame Napoleon and his empire after a decade of being at war.
The ramifications from Waterloo and the Napoleonic Wars are still felt today in contemporary European politics. I think because of this the battle continues to fascinate and to court intense discussion and disagreement.
No doubt my French neighbour the retired army general and I will continue to stubbornly argue our differing viewpoints until the wine bottle empties. But we both agree that we would enjoy having dinner with Napoleon and talk about his military campaigns. I admire Napoleon a little more having read more and for living in France. He’d be a very amusing and stimulating companion.
In many ways, he was also an enlightened and intelligent ruler. His Code Napoleon is an extremely enlightened law code. At the same time this is a man who had a very, very low threshold for boredom. I think he was addicted to war.
General Robert E. Lee, at Fredericksburg said, “It is well that war is so dreadful, otherwise we would grow too fond of it.”
Napoleon would never have agreed with that. War was his drug. There’s no evidence that Wellington enjoyed war. He said after Waterloo, and I believe him, “I pray to God that I have fought my last battle.” He spent much of the battle saying to the men, “If you survive, if you just stand there and repel the French, I’ll guarantee you a generation of peace.” He thought the point of war was peace. And he sure gave not just Britain but also an entire European continent some respite from the spilling of blood on a battlefield.
Thanks for your question.
#question#ask#waterloo#battle#battle of waterloo#napoleon#wellington#history#britain#france#prussia#austria#german#europe#military#british army#soldier
89 notes
·
View notes
Text
Cult Girl: Doctorate (Hannibal x Female!Reader) pt. 2
Oils
Cult girl socializes at the opera and receives an unexpected call.
Note: I tagged this as “anti mlm” as in multi-level marketing and not men-loving-men.
Trigger warnings: Discussions of cults and emotional manipulation
It wasn't until after the opera was over that people began to notice you may have had a little fun during intermission. Hannibal's hair wasn't in its usual perfect side part and his jacket was slightly wrinkled in places. You could cover most of his love bites with your stole, but nothing could hide that post-orgasm glow.
Most opera-goers stayed to socialize for hours after the show concluded, making an already long night even longer. It was like clubbing, but for rich old people.
"So you're the future Mrs. Hannibal Lecter?" A woman with silvery hair said. She dragged her husband into the conversation by the arm. "I've heard so much about you."
You were about to say something witty, but noticed the way she was looking at you. Scanning you up and down. Looking for anything out of place to grill you about.
"Only good things, I hope." Hannibal said in your silence. His voice was vaguely threatening. "She is a doctoral student, in her second year of her graduate studies in clinical psychology."
The husband, who, up to this point, hadn't spoken a word, perked up. "Is that right?"
You smiled, excited for the chance to talk about your passion. "Yes sir. I've still got quite a ways to go, but I love my work."
"You should be proud." The man praised, looking at Hannibal. "You've got yourself an ambitious wife."
"Oh, we're not married yet." You corrected.
"So when can we expect an invitation?" The woman asked.
"Six months from now, isn't it?" Hannibal answered. "Memorial day weekend. Then I'm taking her to Italy for a lengthy honeymoon."
The woman threw her head back and sighed. "That sounds heavenly."
"You young modern girls are always so intuitive." The man commented. "I'll bet you tricked him into marrying you."
You wanted to call this guy out for his sexist bullshit, but he wasn't far off. It was Hannibal who tricked you, though.
Technically, he proposed to you within the first six months. You just didn't know it. It took until shockingly recently to find out.
It was during a ballroom dancing lesson of all places. You were sweaty, but loved the feeling of your lover's hands gently guiding your movements. You stepped away from the lesson to get some water, and innocently asked when he would propose to you.
"I believe I already did." He said with enough conviction to blur the lines of seriousness and sarcasm.
"You pretended to." You corrected. "Remember? We were just pretending to be engaged for Anna's wedding."
"But it didn't end after the wedding, did it?" He observed. "You kept calling me your fiancé long after that weekend passed."
You paused, then threw your head back in exasperation. "Oh my god, Hannibal."
Hannibal laughed. "I told you. Someday it won't be a lie."
"You're a piece of shit, you know that?" You pressed your fingers to your temples. "So we've been engaged this whole time?"
"What can I say?" He said, gently. "I knew you were my one and only even then. It was just a matter of circumventing your inhibitions."
"I'm not complaining." You folded your arms. "But a little notice would have been nice."
"Well, if you insist." He laced his fingers between his own. "[F/N] [L/N]. Will you be my wife?"
Even though the question was truly just a formality, you were still as giddy as a schoolgirl to hear those words.
"Yes, Hannibal Lecter." You said, cheeks stinging from smiling so hard. "I will marry you."
Then you just went back to the dance lesson like nothing happened. It was shockingly in-character for both of you.
"No." You shook your head. "We killed someone together and took a blood oath to never separate."
The couple laughed. Hannibal looked down at you with pride.
“So [F/N].” The man said. “Have you given any thought to your doctoral dissertation?”
“Oh, Charles.” The woman rolled her eyes. “I’m sure she didn’t come here to be grilled about her studies.”
“No, it’s okay.” You smiled. As long as you were talking about school, you weren’t being interrogated about the thirty-year age gap between you and Hannibal. “I have been thinking about my dissertation. There are plenty of fascinating topics to choose from, but I can’t not write it about, well, the reason I began to study psychology in the first place.”
“And that is?” The man raised an eyebrow.
“Cults.” You said, grinning ear to ear. “Understanding them, their leaders, their followers, why people join them. How they evolve and grow more insidious as time passes. What form they’re starting to take in the digital age.”
“That is interesting.” The woman’s voice rose, connoting genuine engagement. “And what form are they taking in the digital age?”
You looked up at Hannibal, as if to ask for permission. Permission to rip into her and burn that bridge for good. He answered in the affirmative.
“Ma’am, could I take a look at your bracelet?” You asked, already knowing exactly what she would say.
Her face lit up. “Oh, do you like it?”
She pulled it off her wrist and handed it to you. You brought it to your nose and took a whiff, confirming your theory. Then you handed it off to Hannibal, whose sense of smell was much more refined. He took one breath, then recoiled.
Hannibal covered his mouth and nose with his hand and coughed. “That is... quite strong, Mrs. DeMarco.”
“It’s Affirm, by doTERRA.” She revealed, her voice growing defensive. “It helps you ground yourself and remember your worth.”
You handed the bracelet back to her. “Do you sell doTERRA, Mrs. DeMarco?”
“Well, now that you mention it...” A small smile appeared on her lips. “Why? Would you like to buy some?”
“I hate to be the one to tell you this, ma’am, but...” You lied. “You’re actually in a cult.”
She had nothing to say to that. She just stared at you with her mouth agape, urging you to explain yourself.
“Multilevel marketing companies employ a host of cult manipulation tactics to con people out of their savings.” You explained. “Just because the promise is financial independence instead of a spot in paradise, doesn’t mean it’s not a lie. Research conducted by the Federal Trade Commission shows that the vast majority of participants actually lose money. The statistics are just a google search away, yet thousands of people still insist on the legitimacy of the companies they sell for.”
“Well, I-” She protested, but couldn’t find the words to defend herself. “I’m there for the community, really. For the first time in years, I have a sisterhood of like-minded women who love me!”
You smiled through a cringe. “That’s another pretty common cult manipulation tactic. They appropriate familial language to make people feel more connected to the group than they really should be.”
Although you didn’t expect her to, she looked to be genuinely considering it.
“Next time you see your ‘sisters’,” You began. “Pay attention to how they talk about people who are not in the group. Or, better yet, tell them that you’re considering leaving. You’ll see how conditional their love is.”
An awkward, deafening silence followed. The woman looked at her husband, as if willing him to do something. To stand up to the evil twenty-something grad student who had the audacity to cite her sources.
Instead, the husband just burst out in riotous laughter.
“Miriam!” He nearly shouted, heaving like he was about to collapse. “I told you that oil business was up to no good! No honest company makes their employees pay to work!”
The woman’s face turned red. You almost felt bad for her. The feeling vanished when the man put his hand on your shoulder.
“Seriously, Dr. Lecter, you’d better keep this one.” He said, wiping a tear from his eye. “She’s an absolute godsend.”
“No divine intervention was involved whatsoever, Dr. DeMarco.” Hannibal smiled to himself and brought a glass of champagne to his lips. “She is a woman of her own making."
"Oh, we all know that's not entirely true." The woman snapped, slipping into passive-aggression. She glanced at Hannibal. "How much are you spending on this mouthy little know-it-all? Isn't it about $80k a year?"
You, of course, brought this on yourself. You threw down the gauntlet by going after this girlboss's side hustle, so now nothing was off-limits.
"I wouldn't worry about that, Mrs. DeMarco." Hannibal said, calmly. "My soon-to-be wife's education is a much better investment than that overpriced napalm you wear on your wrist."
You couldn't help but laugh at that. It was a laugh you shared with the man. Hannibal looked down at you, admiring how your face lit up.
"You'll forgive my wife's rudeness." The man requested. "Please, Ms. [F/N], tell me more about your dissertation."
"Well," you laced your fingers together. "I'm planning to write my dissertation on the cult of academic elitism."
"I would tread lightly, dear." The woman warned, eyes darting to Hannibal. "You wouldn't want to bite the hand that feeds you."
You adjusted your stole, giving them a quick glance at the love bites along your neck.
"I assure you." You said. "He quite likes it when I bite."
Your clutch started to aggressively, audibly vibrate. You could have sworn you'd put your phone on silent, but it buzzed nonetheless.
"Probably just, y'know-" you stuttered, embarrassed. "An amber alert or something."
"We are expecting a snowstorm, I believe. I was warned of it a few minutes ago." Hannibal said, always ready to cover your ass whenever needed. The couple nodded along in understanding.
You pulled your phone from your clutch. Your eyes widened and your face turned sickly pale at the sight of a caller you thought you’d never hear from again. Without thinking, you slid the deny icon across the screen.
“Right.” You said, tucking your phone and your secrets back into the clutch. “Winter Storm... Theresa is headed this way.”
Hannibal cleared his throat. “In that case, [F/N] and I must take our leave before we get snowed in. It was very nice catching up with you. I will see to it that [F/N] and I have you for dinner very soon.”
104 notes
·
View notes
Photo
old archie x maxie (hardenshipping) doodles i never posted, from 2017 or 2018. they were related to some of the doodles in this post.
I have a lot of unpublished drawings of these guys, and i never did elaborate on my headcanons for them. The truth is, I was (and still kinda am) very anxious and embarrassed about this fixation, probably because it centers around villains and “woobifies” them, but also because after playing and researching more into ORAS, i discovered that my personal canon was contradicted by actual canon and i felt invalidated.
For the sake of posterity, I’ll summarize my old headcanons below. (It’s still pretty long, ugh)
A grunt in Team Magma’s hideout says that Archie and Maxie “used to be on the same team.” In canon, this probably implies that they worked together on New Mauville, Sea Mauville, or another unnamed project, depending on how old they are and how long ago those projects started and ended.
However, like many other fans, I thought this meant they used to be in Team Rocket together, and I elaborated an entire backstory based on that:
+ Maxie and Archie were part of a group of Rocket recruits attempting to start a branch of Team Rocket in the Hoenn Region. The project failed because soon after they arrived, Giovanni was defeated in Kanto and officially dissolved Team Rocket, causing a schism to form within the Hoenn team over whether to give up the project or not. This eventually lead to the team splintering into two factions, one lead by Maxie and the other lead by Archie, which eventually grew and rebranded themselves into Team Magma and Team Aqua.
-Maxie and Archie met and connected enough to start dating, though they were emotionally dysfunctional. As problems arose and the Team began to splinter, their relationship also broke down and their separation was very messy.
Maxie clung to the ambition of staying in Hoenn and building up the Team as a paragon of human industry, pushing away Archie and anyone else he deemed as “not useful.”
Archie also wanted to make the Team work, but not in the way Maxie and his side wanted, at the expense of nature. Archie felt hurt and betrayed as Maxie pushed him away and disagreed with him, making him contradict and lash out at Maxie even more.
This all culminated in a huge fight between Archie and Maxie and their respective sides, involving both Pokemon battling and actual fist-fighting. Local authorities were called in, causing the teams to scatter, but not before Archie and Maxie promised to face each other again, reforging themselves as bitter rivals.
-- Maxie
+ Maxie is (the pokemon equivalent of) German/Japanese, and was born on Cinnabar Island. His birth name was Maximillian Matsubasa Von Brandt, but he prefers simply “Maxie”. He IDs as bigender, asexual and demi-homoromantic.
His father is a Kanto businessman named Masaru Matsubasa. His mother is from somewhere in or near Kalos, named Melissa Von Brandt. They were both wealthy and successful business people who frequently left on business trips, Masaru travelling between Kanto and Johto and Melissa to her home country.
Maxie was often left alone or with a nanny at home. He was well-provided for and self-sufficient, but he was lonely and emotionally stunted. He had a passion for geology and engineering, and showed interest in contributing to helping Cinnabar’s local issues, which were often tense because of the limited land space. Homelessness and unemployment were high, and development plans to alleviate these were stymied by parties who lobbied for the preservation of the local Pokemon wildlife by any means.
Maxie’s parents were skeptical of his choice in career but still supported him, if only half-heartedly. This lead Maxie to study Cinnabar’s volcano, which he found to be very much active and possibly dangerous. He developed a plan to build in and around the volcano in such a way that it would utilize extra space inside the mountain for housing/businesses and its magma for natural energy to power the city, possibly circumventing its eventual eruption.
He presented this plan to Cinnabar’s city council, but was practically laughed out of the meeting for such an ambitious and dangerous idea, especially by the wildlife parties. This damaged his reputation and caused him to be fired/demoted from his job. His parents reprimanded him, regretting their decision to support him.
Lost and disgusted with his life, Maxie found recruitment with Team Rocket and left Cinnabar to join their efforts on the mainland. When he presented his research to their higher-ups, they were impressed enough to pass it along to Giovanni himself, and Maxie ended up contributing to the construction of some of their underground lairs, like in Celadon City.
This also made him a prime candidate for the Rocket Hoenn project as a lead engineer and scientist, and he joined the project with high hopes.
+ His interest in Pokemon was soured by his past and usually only extends are far as his ambitions, which means he views Pokemon only as things that can be useful to whatever projects he’s working on, otherwise they are a nuisance. After becoming the leader of Team Magma and having to train a personal team to defend himself with, he warms up to Pokemon a bit more.
+ Maxie plays up his confidence and genius, but does have moments of crippling self-doubt and anxiety. Deep down, he’s socially awkward and has trouble expressing his feelings, tending to bottle things up until they spill out in moments of anger.
+ Maxie used to be a semi-heavy smoker in his youth to cope with his anxiety. After becoming the leader of Team Magma, his health was suffering and his grunts were visibly uncomfortable around him, so for the sake of his own health and that of his team, he quit, with help and advice from Courtney and Tabitha.
+ Maxie hates his parents and hasn’t contacted them since he left Cinnabar, which was over ten years ago by the end of ORAS events. He avoids them to the point that he uses a forged identity in Hoenn, named “Maxie Stormfront.” ‘Stormfront’ is a reference from one of his favorite metal bands, the Doom Hounds, because he is a nerd.
+ Years later, Cinnabar’s volcano did erupt and destroy the town, displacing its human population. Maxie has mixed feelings about this – he’s not sure if it’s righteous karma for the City Council rejecting his plans, or a sign that his old plans were doomed to failure and he was better off leaving Cinnabar after all.
-- Archie
+ Archie is (the pokemon equivalent of) Black/Hispanic and a Hoenn native. His birth name is Archibald Rodriguez. He IDs as a cis man (or trans?), pansexual and panromantic.
He was born to his father, Alexander Rodriguez and his mother, Alicia Fuentes (Rodriguez after marriage) in a small fishing town on one of Hoenn’s coasts, with its fishery being its only major industry. Most of its residents are middle-class or poor, and few members pursue an education after high school, usually joining the local fishing industry.
In his youth, Archie didn’t care much for school or work, preferring to spend his days playing with the local water Pokemon and his friends, Matt and Shelly. However, this exposed him to the effects that overfishing and pollution had on the local wildlife, and he eventually grew to want to pursue a career as a Veterinarian, specifically for water pokemon.
His parents didn’t believe he would be successful and his town had few resources to help him. The most he could do was research at the local library and a then-primitive internet.
Worse, his town was outright apathetic to the damage their industry was causing to the local wildlife because they depended on its capital to survive.
+A possible traumatic memory involves a young Archie nursing a sick Magikarp back to health for weeks, only to later discover it trapped in the nets of the fishery his father worked at, doomed to become food/products. When he attempted to cut the nets and save the Magikarp, his father restrained him and reprimanded him, claiming “it’s just a fish, boy! They’re all just stupid fish!”
Eventually, Archie was a depressed drifter in his 20s, unable to hold onto work and unable to afford to leave to a larger city. He often fought with his abrasive father and his mother was coddling, but unsupportive. This made Archie a prime candidate for Team Rocket recruiters as they arrived on Hoenn, promising a way out of his backwater town, decent pay, and a career where he’d be appreciated and be able to work with Pokemon to change the world. He joined as a lowly Grunt, but was talented and well-respected within the Team.
-Archie has limited contact with his parents since he left home, only calling them once a year or so.
-Archie doesn’t like being referred to as his full name, it feels pretentious and brings back uncomfortable memories of his family.
+I used to headcanon Archie and Matt as biological brothers because of the “bro” thing, but I’m not sure about keeping that. If so, Matt’s name would be short for Matthias Rodriguez, because their parents liked pretentious names.
-Like some of his dialog implies, Archie is kind of depressed, pessimistic and cynical deep down, but hides it behind his boisterous, reckless attitude. At his worst, he’s downright bitter, uncaring of his own life or the lives of humanity in general, in favor of Pokemon.
#hardenshipping#aqua leader archie#magma leader maxie#rocket hardenshipping#pokemon oras#jeminy3 art#jeminy writes#long post#headcanons
272 notes
·
View notes
Text
A Debunking and, in my Humble Opinion, Superior Version of Weird History’s “Hardcore Facts About Alexander Hamilton”
I haven’t updated my blog in quite some time, and that is due to my schedule being primarily dominated by school. So, I decided my first step into posting semi-regularly once more shall be a more casual, more fun endeavor.
If you have not heard of the Weird History youtube channel, good for you. It is yet another social media platform that misconstrues history to appeal to the public’s enjoyment of extremes and strangeness. I saw The Historical Fashion Queens make a video responding to their highly misinformed documentary on corsetry on Miss Abby Cox’s youtube channel, which I highly recommend. This intrigued me, and I decided to find a video I could dissect off my expertise, at first only for fun in my own time. This resulted in the production in a very long bullet list in the notes app of my phone. So here is my informal destruction of this godforsaken video.
Disclaimer: I am not at all excusing any of the awful things Alexander Hamilton did during his lifetime. I am absolutely the last person who would even come near to claiming that many of the things he did were justifiable in the slightest. Although, he might be the only historical figure which I have a very strong interest in the life of, as he was incredibly complex, and the part of me with a love of psychology finds him absolutely fascinating. There is also something to be said about the way we consider moral standards of historical figures. We are quite lucky to believe in the time that we do, and not all of our standards can apply to historical figures. This does not mean they should not be held accountable. I find that a way to criticize people while also praising them where it is due is by judging them based upon their intentions. In my opinion, Hamilton’s intentions were not to harm anyone in most situations, so I don’t think he was a terrible person, nor do I think he was a particularly good one. Then again, I don’t think either of those things about a mass majority of people, so let us proceed without further delay. (Note: I will also be referring to the collective Weird History channel as the Narrator to avoid any mental gymnastics, and all of my knowledge is coming from my memory of Hamilton’s writing and some biographies.)
Automatically, the video starts with mention of the musical, but that just reminds me that many use Ron Chernow’s biography of Hamilton as a basis of their statements about him without utilizing much critical thinking, so I am slightly nervous.
The Narrator then refers to Hammy Ham man as “...one of America’s most undervalued founding fathers...” Now, it is debatable whether or not Mr. Hamilton is undervalued per se, but when it comes to the founding fathers, they are usually undervalued or overvalued. At this point, Hamilton is both.
I shall not subscribe, thank you for the offer though, Mr. Narrator.
Now for the first fact: “Historians don’t know when Hamilton was born.” Yes, this is correct, but I don’t believe this should be labeled as “hardcore”, but perhaps that is just me. One early document indicates that Hamilton was born in 1755, while all later ones point to 1757 as his year of birth. We know Hamilton was not always a completely honest man, so it is possible that he lied.
Also, they show an image of a baby, and I do not know if this is actually Hamilton, but they use a lot of strange imagery, which I found humorous.
“A self-made man born out of wedlock.” Now, this fact could indeed be “hardcore”, if this was not colonial America we are discussing. Hamilton actually wasn’t really special in this regard. Yes, his rise to fame was impressive considering his circumstances, but this wasn’t unheard of.
The Narrator then says that Hamilton’s mother, Rachel Faucette, was “estranged from her husband.” This caused me some confusion as it is a vast understatement. Her ex-husband was absolutely awful to her.
Additionally, they claim that James Hamilton left his family behind for some reason that I did not write in my notes, but the most likely reason that he actually left was because of his awesome debt. James Hamilton also had a history of ambitious pursuits for money, so it would not be extreme to claim that he moved to another island to attempt to make a fortune in some trading endeavor.
They also cease to mention the Stevens family, who housed young Alexander while he was working for Beekman and Cruger, and had a great influence on him, but I digress.
“A college dropout who joined the Revolution.” Once again, this isn’t special. Many rowdy young Whigs left behind their careers and educations for pursuit of military fame in the Continental Army. They also do not mention anything of Hamilton’s expansive military career, which aside from being indicative of primitive research, but would produce more “hardcore facts.”
Although, they do discuss his application to Princeton college, which is interesting enough I suppose, although everyone who has heard the first two songs of the musical knows this story. His proposal for an “accelerated course of study” was likely inspired by Aaron Burr, as claimed by Chernow and Miranda, or James Madison, as supported by evidence provided by author Noah Feldman in his novel, The Three Lives of James Madison, which is an excellent read. Young Madison, having already completed a course, decided to do so again, but compacting a usually three year course into a shorter period of time. He hardly slept during this period, which was stressful upon his health, making Princeton more disinclined to allow a similar course to be taken.
The Narrator then claims that Hamilton “formed his own militia of 25 men.” Technically, yes? But not exactly. Hamilton joined a paramilitary group called the Hearts of Oak, and they drilled in Trinity Churchyard. This became ironic later. He then became a captain in the New York Artillery Company, and enlisted his own men, which was at one time around thirty or so, if my memory serves me correctly.
“Founded a bank that existed for over two centuries.” Ah, yes, a very hardcore fact indeed. Yes, Hamilton did establish the Bank of America, but Robert Morris was the one who inspired him to do so. Though, I do think the financial plan is a product of his own genius, but I will get into that much later.
I got an ad. :(
The Narrator also says that the misfortunes done to the New York shipping industry by the Articles of Confederation were the most prominent, if not sole, motivation for Hamilton to concoct his financial plan. He first recognized the need for a sound financial plan when he was in the army. You know, when he was watching men die of inadequate supplies because the government couldn’t tax the states.
This video, like Chernow’s biography and Miranda’s musical, claims that Alexander Hamilton and Aaron Burr were friends when, in actuality, they weren’t really. Yes, they knew each other, and they didn’t hate each other until the end of Hamilton’s life, but they really didn’t think about each other much before the Election of 1800.
“Hamilton authored over half of the Federalist Papers.” Indeed, he did! I enjoy this fact. It isn’t very “hardcore” but it is very impressive. The Federalist Papers were arguably Hamilton’s greatest accomplishment, as he organized the entire thing and, as previously stated, authored much of them. I very much enjoy the Federalist Papers, as they give some insight as to Hamilton’s political and philosophical theories, as well as how he thought of the world. It makes for an interesting read if you have something you’re looking for.
Now, this may be a hot take, but Madison’s essays are by far more effective, as they were better organized. Hamilton and I share a common flaw, and that is the lack of brevity.
“Involved in America’s first sex scandal.” Yes, we all know. I’ll get into the Reynold’s affair later because it’s its own beast to conquer. Basically what you need to understand information I shall provide later in this post is that James Reynolds extorted money from Hamilton, and if Hamilton failed to pay, Reynolds would expose the affair Hamilton was having with his wife, Maria. Hamilton paid, but when Reynolds was arrested for something else, he exposed Hamilton anyway.
“He worked with Aaron Burr to defend a man.” Once again, this isn’t very surprising. They were both capable lawyers in the same area, so it was basically inevitable. Though there was this one instance where Hamilton and Burr were working on a case together and Hamilton, being himself, insisted upon having the last word. Well, Burr was tired of him, and I can’t say I blame him, so he made every possible argument in his finishing speech, leaving Hamilton with virtually nothing.
The Narrator also mentions Hamilton’s opposition to slavery, but he didn’t really outwardly oppose it as much as you would think listening to the musical or reading Chernow’s biography. Far from being the “fervent abolitionist” Chernow and Miranda glorify, Hamilton didn’t really do much for the enslaved. He helped John Laurens in his Black Plan and joined the Manumission Society, but other than that, he never made any attempt to progress the abolition of slavery. He also “purchased” slaves for his in-laws, and some argue that he “owned” some himself, but there is no contemporary evidence to support this that I have seen. The enslaved and servants that were in his household likely belonged to his wife.
“Founded a newspaper that still exists.” Ok.
“Died by duel.” I swear, this fact is by far the most unnecessary. They mention the duel so many times that it is already redundant. I completely skipped over this part, and the video ended, so I was thoroughly underwhelmed.
Well, seeing as this post is already longer than my attention span, I shall save you the pains of having to read any more in just one post. I shall make a follow-up to this where I give my own facts, which I believe are far more hardcore than “he founded a newspaper.” I hope you have enjoyed and this isn’t too terribly boring. I hope to get back to posting soon.
#alexander hamilton#eliza hamilton#hamilton#hamilton the musical#hamilton the movie#lin manuel miranda#ron chernow#aaron burr#maria reynolds#james reynolds#james madison#thomas jefferson#john jay#weird history#abby cox#American Revolution#amrev#amrev history#american history#american colonies#america#the american revolution#The American War of Independence#colonial america#hamilton burr duel#duel#omg im so tired of planning and writing this but im pushing through for the sake of accurate portrayals of real people#im carrying the weight of the world all of you should be thanking me#is it awkward if i listen to how stands the glass around while i write this
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
Sharon Carter: A Study in Selfishness
The Falcon and the Winter Soldier spotlighted some hard truths. Beyond its real-world parallels, it’s changed our perspective on the MCU. And on the heels of the finale, we can’t help but reflect on how we got here.
It feels like ages ago that an alien invaded Earth believing it was his right to do so. This madman imposed his will upon a whole planet. He wielded god-like power over an entire species. He took the lives of countless people, leaving the rest to pick up the pieces of their shattered lives.
In doing so, he became one of the most beloved characters in the MCU.
So why is it that many of the people who adore a monster are now so disappointed with Sharon Carter?
Easy. Loki is a man.
Angels and Demons
Relax, everybody. This is not an anti-Loki treatise. I’m writing this post with a Loki poster behind my chair, a Loki mug on my desk, and a Loki t-shirt on my back.
To be fair, it helps that the God of Mischief is played by one of the most charming, attractive men in Hollywood. But Emily VanCamp is no slouch. She’s a beautiful, talented actor who elevates any project. So why are people upset that she’s the Power Broker?
Women aren’t supposed to veer from familial or cultural expectations.
Women aren’t supposed to put themselves first.
Women aren’t supposed to seize power in a man’s world.
The events of Civil War alone had a tremendous impact on the characters we love. Sam and Bucky’s respective ordeals changed them forever, and The Blip forced them to adapt even further. So many people are praising their growth in the TFATWS finale, and we’re among them. But it’s frustrating to then see comments like these:
“Omg wtf is wrong with Sharon? That is NOT who she is!”
“Since when is Sharon evil? That ain’t her.”
“Sharon is totally a Skrull. The Sharon we know would never turn her back on everything she stands for.”
Guess what, folks? Just like Sam and Bucky, the Sharon we once knew no longer exists. She, too, changed and grew - right out of the box that the patriarchy built for her. And people don’t know how to handle it.
Double Standards
Misogyny is so deeply woven into the fabric of our society that a lot of people, women included, often don’t see it. But it’s in almost every facet of daily life, leaching into our brains like a toxin. And TFATWS called Marvel out on it by illustrating a simple fact:
Men and women who behave in the same way are treated very differently.
A man who tramples others for a promotion is ambitious. A woman is a conniving bitch.
A man who sleeps around is held up as a ladies’ man. A woman is looked down upon as a whore.
A man who logs extra time at the office is a good provider. A woman is neglecting her family.
Despite centuries of fighting for our right to exist, women are still brainwashed to be and be seen as lesser than men. We’re expected to conform to roles meant to keep us subservient. We’re told that caring for others is more important than caring for ourselves.
Sharon Carter received the same cultural programming. And it’s likely that she felt familial pressure (either explicit or implicit) to follow in Aunt Peggy’s footsteps, whether she wanted to or not.
And follow she did.
Sharon joined S.H.I.E.L.D. She fought armed HYDRA agents. Then she sacrificed her life, her career, and her freedom for the greater good. And what did she get for it?
The same thing women always get when they put everyone else’s best interests ahead of their own.
She got fucked.
A Matter of Perspective
Let’s pretend the TFATWS finale had gone differently. The Power Broker is a previously unseen bad guy, a Wilson Fisk type. After the U.S. government branded her as a fugitive and the Avengers forgot her, Sharon has just been trying to survive in Madripoor.
Nonetheless, she helps Sam and Bucky neutralize Karli. Sam secures Sharon’s pardon and she reclaims her former post as a dutiful C.I.A. agent.
Talk about disappointing; that would be like watching a woman return to a man who beats her.
In reality, Sharon is revealed as the Power Broker. After the people for whom she gave everything betrayed her, she built a lucrative business from scratch using a canny brain and the skills S.H.I.E.L.D. taught her.
Now for those who are incensed by Sharon’s turn because she’s selling weapons, please see Exhibit A:
Even after Tony Stark stopped manufacturing weapons for the U.S. government, he continued making them for S.H.I.E.L.D. If memory serves, he also created a sentient murder-bot that leveled a city before nearly annihilating mankind.
Tony’s intentions were noble, but that didn’t make him any less responsible for a humanitarian disaster. The Sokovians would have been well within their rights to demand Tony’s arrest and incarceration.
But we love Tony, so we don’t like to go there.
And speaking of the U.S. government, let’s be real. American politicians wouldn’t condemn Sharon for illegally selling weapons to dangerous groups. They’d condemn her for cutting into their own profits.
If there’s one thing the U.S. government excels at, it’s creating and arming terrorists. Sharon’s just running their playbook.
Redefining Selfishness
In all fairness, some people’s disappointment over Sharon’s arc has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with heroism. For this discussion, see Exhibit B:
Ever since Steve Rogers got his happy ending with Peggy Carter in Endgame, the Marvel fandom has been divided into two camps.
Camp 1: Steve is a selfish bastard who abandoned his family, his country, and the world when they all needed him the most.
Camp 2: Steve did more than enough for his family, his country, and the world when they all needed him most and deserved his happiness.
I will always be a card-carrying member of Camp 2, which is one reason I exited my Endgame theater as a human ball of snot.
Steve Rogers gave enough for his country even before he was defrosted. He liberated a POW camp behind enemy lines. He defeated Red Skull. He saved countless lives by crashing the HYDRA bomber into the arctic, sacrificing his own life in the process.
And when he was resurrected after 70 years, did he stop and smell the roses? Read a book on the beach?
No. He saved the world. Again, and again, and again.
It’s incredibly noble that a life with Peggy is all Steve wanted. Think about Michael Bay’s uber-patriotic Armageddon. Those roughnecks had quite the list of demands for saving the world, all of which seemed perfectly reasonable because, hello, they were saving the world.
So what does this have to do with Sharon Carter? Well, if you’re in Steve Rogers Camp 1, you likely see Sharon as a selfish bitch. I’ll make the same argument in her defense:
She’s given more than enough for others. She has every right to now put herself first.
We as women need to redefine selfishness. It’s been weaponized against us for far too long. We have to reframe it as a positive concept whereby we simply make our needs a priority in our own lives.
If more women embraced selfishness, we would be unstoppable.
Oh, and if you’re in Steve Rogers Camp 2 but still disappointed in Sharon Carter, you’ve got some hypocrisy on your chin. Might want to wipe that off.
A Final Note
Alice Walker, who knows a thing or two about feminism, once said, “The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”
When the name “Power Broker” was first dropped on The Falcon and the Winter Soldier, it felt cheesy. But now it seems like the perfect title for a woman who not only refused to give up her power, but actively sought more.
Sharon Carter is unequivocally selfish, but that doesn’t make her evil or even wrong.
It makes her one powerful woman. And we can’t wait to see her again.
#Sharon Carter#Power Broker#Peggy Carter#Agent Carter#SHIELD#HYDRA#military industrial complex#Captain America#Captain America The First Avenger#Captain America The WinterSoldier#Captain America Civil War#Steve Rogers#Avengers Endgame#Endgame#Avengers#Battle of New York#Loki#Loki Laufeyson#God of Mischief#Tom Hiddleston#Iron Man#Tony Stark#Stark Industries#Ultron#Age of Ultron#Sokovia#feminism#womens rights#womens empowerment#female empowerment
63 notes
·
View notes
Text
52 Project #24: The Princesses and the Peas
(Inspired by a post on Tumblr and if I can ever find it again I will link it here.)
(Not proofread, beta’ed, or even read through a second time because this is massively late and if I don’t post within the next hour it will officially be next week everywhere in the United States and I will have failed in my mission. I’ll try to re-read and proofread and edit next week. Also this note is highly unprofessional, but I learned my relationship to my audience through fanfic, so this is how I roll.)
***
Surely you have heard a similar tale before, almost but not entirely like this one, of the queen who sought the perfect wife for her son, the crown prince.
The queen had ruled the land alone since the death of her husband. She was praised for her wisdom and her benevolence toward her people. But she was no longer young, and it was time to make sure her son made a politically beneficial marriage, to strengthen his position when it came time for him to take the crown. Many in the land whispered that the young man would make a terrible king, and wanted him to abdicate in favor of his younger sister, who was beautiful and bright and smiling. Celia, the young sister, could look anyone in the eye and make them believe that in that moment, they were the most important person in her world. Arien, the prince… could not do that.
The prince had a talent for mathematics, and it had expressed itself very young. Some said he should be the chancellor of the exchequer rather than the king. But Queen Leyta knew her son would make a compassionate and wise ruler as well as a prudent one. He also had a gift for seeing the humanity behind the numbers he calculated, of being able to think of the impact they would have on the people he would one day rule.
Once, when he was a child of six, his nursemaid lost him. Leyta found him behind the kitchens, picking through the garbage bins to find table scraps. She would have punished the kitchen staff for allowing such a thing, but Arien insisted that she should not. “It’s not their fault, Mother. I ordered them to let me, and I’m the prince, so they had to obey me. I told them that if you became angry at them I would tell you that they were only obeying my orders. They can’t get in trouble for obeying their liege.”
Leyta sighed. She could punish them for obeying their liege, when their liege was 6 and the thing he wanted to do was eat garbage, but she wouldn’t, because she knew why they obeyed. When the prince was thwarted, he would ask why. And if he received an answer, he would argue with it and present his position. Sometimes, this debate would lead to him accepting the necessity, and calmly going about his business, seeming to forget all about what he’d asked. More often, if he didn’t get an answer to “why”, or he didn’t like the answer and thought it didn’t make sense, and he was still thwarted, he would start to scream and hide under tables, or scream and run around and break things, or scream and slam his head into the wall, and he wouldn’t stop even when offered the thing he wanted. It was very, very hard to calm him once he started shrieking. So instead of punishing the kitchen staff, she asked Arien, “Why were you eating garbage?”
“Our food is bought with the taxes we take from the people,” he said seriously. “If we wasted less food, we wouldn’t have to tax the people as sorely as we do, and they would have more money to buy things for themselves.”
So she took him aside and told him that the scraps were fed to the dogs, who helped the palace huntsmen bring down game, or the goats and fowl, who gave the palace milk, meat and eggs, or they were tilled into the ground to make the fields around the palace more fruitful. They did not, in fact, go to waste; food that wasn’t wholesome for humans to eat could still feed animals, who would turn it back into wholesome food.
Then she had a lengthy discussion with him about tax policy, and listened gravely to his suggestions as to how they could ease the burdens on the people, and told him what the problems with his ideas were. And when some of his ideas didn’t have significant problems, she told him so, and discussed them with him, and even implemented a few as policy.
Arien also had a great love for bugs. He spent much of his days wandering the grounds, sketching every insect he saw, capturing some to study them and figure out what they ate. When Leyta learned of this, she found a learned scholar of insects, and hired him to be Arien’s tutor in the matter of insects, only. The man was at first openly resentful of being required to work with a small child, assuming that Arien would be a spoiled princeling with no real interest in learning, but when he discovered Arien’s love for the tiny creatures, he embraced the boy wholeheartedly and tutored him as well as he could.
The prince had few friends. He was open and innocent, happy to make friends with any child close to his own age, but the honest children who truly wanted a playmate were put off by Arien’s tendency to talk about bugs and math almost constantly. The children who put up with Arien’s chatter were, to Leyta’s eyes, obviously coached by ambitious mothers, pretending to friendship with the strange young prince to improve their position at court. She arranged for most of these children to be sent away – either their mothers dismissed, or the family sent to one of the crown’s holdings with some duty to perform or another. Arien was saddened by the disappearance of his playmates, since he didn’t realize they saw him as mere stepping stones to power. Celia knew, and would comfort her brother as well as she could… but she didn’t have a lot of patience for math, tax policy, and insects either.
As he grew up, Arien continued to display a strange mixture of wisdom and childishness. He would run around the palace grounds, playing with children far younger than he was, and they were not old enough to try to manipulate him, so Queen Leyta left them alone. He enjoyed riding his horse and taking care of it, and was often found at the stables, for he believed his horse needed to cared for in just the exact way he did it, and he didn’t trust the stablehands to follow his instructions exactly. He would spend hours discussing the politics of the land and the problems facing various groups of his subjects with Leyta and her own advisors, and then he would scream and throw himself on the floor at dinner because a chef had put visible onions in his soup, and he would need to be put to bed with his favorite blanket and a knitted doll of a dog that he’d had when he was four.
People said that the boy was touched in the head, that he was slightly mad, and also, that a future king who threw temper tantrums over onions was not to be trusted. But they weren’t, exactly, tantrums, as Leyta saw them. They didn’t stop when the problem was solved, they usually didn’t include demands – in fact, usually it was hard to get the prince to explain what was wrong, because he seemed to lose much of his ability to speak when these fits came on him. And she could see in his eyes that he was terrified and overwhelmed, not angry and demanding. Arien needed the world to work a certain way, and when it did not, it left him adrift, frightened and lost in a world that seemed to make no sense to him anymore.
Some of these ways that the world needed to work involved food, and the importance of not being able to see onions, for an onion large enough to see was large enough to crunch in his mouth in a way that apparently was so disgusting it would make him lose his ability to eat all day. There were similar rules regarding peppers, and certain cream dishes. Other ways the world needed to work regarded his mother’s advisors treating him like their future king, not in terms of obsequious deference but in terms of actually listening to his ideas and explaining things to him – even when he was merely eight. And then there was the care of animals – his own animals needed to be cared for in an exact way, and if he saw anyone being cruel to an animal, he might actually become violent to that person. The same was true of stronger people being cruel to weaker ones. When he was fourteen, he heard a maid crying, and asked a kitchen maid to find out for him what had happened. And then, when he learned that a nobleman under his roof had ill used her and cast her aside, he went to his mother and demanded the man be whipped for his crimes. The political explanations she gave for why that couldn’t be done fell on deaf ears; he was a cruel man and he’d harmed someone he had power over, and that was all Arien cared about. Leyta only managed to satisfy him by sending the man on a probably futile sea expedition to try to find a cheaper source of rice.
This was the boy that Queen Leyta had to find a proper bride for.
Her mother-in-law, the Dowager Queen, had ideas, but it had been many years since the Dowager Queen had actually held any power; she was one of Leyta’s advisors now, nothing more. So the idea would have to be one that Leyta agreed with, herself.
A ball to introduce eligible young women with powerful families to the prince? No. The prince didn’t handle crowds or parties well, or meeting a lot of new people in one evening.
A series of daytime salons, where a small group of eligible women would converse over luncheon with the prince? No. That was still too many people and the prince was self-conscious about people watching him eat.
Individual visits from each eligible young lady and her chaperones, to the palace, to meet with Arien, and also to be approved by Leyta? Yes! An excellent idea. Leyta had her secretary write up the invitations, to all the young women whose parents had written to her or the Dowager to express an interest.
In the palace was a suite of rooms that had been Leyta’s, once, when she’d lived in this palace to learn its ways before marrying the then-prince. She had that suite cleaned and prepared for the guests. Sleeping quarters to either side for the princess’s guards. Ladies-in-waiting to sleep in the antechamber outside the princess’s bedroom. And inside the princess’s bedroom, a bed heaped with several thick eiderdown duvets and pillows, incredibly soft, with sheets made from the finest linens.
And under the second eiderdown duvet, dried peas.
Queen Leyta tested the peas. When she sat on the bed, she couldn’t feel them. If she laid in the bed, she could barely tell they were there. But when she had Arien try it, he said, “You’re going to take them out before the guests come, right? The peas make the bed much too uncomfortable.”
“The peas,” Leyta said, “are to test whether a girl is right for you or not. It’s magic.”
Arien looked at her skeptically, unsure whether he believed in magic or not. “How are dried peas supposed to find me the right wife?”
“Magic,” Leyta said. “I can’t tell you exactly how it works. But it’s very important that you not tell them about the peas, or the magic won’t work.”
“Mother, I’m sixteen. I’m not a child. This whole story sounds ridiculous.”
“All right,” Leyta admitted. “It’s not magic, but I won’t be able to explain it to you until after it’s proven that it works, or doesn’t. But it is very important that you not tell any of your guests about it.”
Arien looked like he wanted to argue some more about it. Leyta said, “Trust me,” and he sighed, plainly remembering the number of times his mother had stood up for him or had come up with some scheme to help him.
“All right, Mother, but I’ll want that explanation afterwards.”
The Dowager Queen had her own theories. “You want to see if they can tell the peas are there?”
“To a certain extent,” Leyta said.
“You know that old wives’ tale about princesses being true and refined if they’re extremely sensitive is just a myth. I wasn’t a fragile flower who’d lose petals if you looked at her hard, and neither were you. And neither will Celia be.”
“I know that, Mother,” Leyta said – it was custom to address your mother-in-law as Mother, and Leyta’s own mother had died shortly after her wedding. The Dowager Queen had been the closest thing to a mother she’d had the entire time she was Queen. “I’m not testing for extreme skin sensitivity. Trust me.”
“It’d be hard for him to get an heir on a princess that fragile, don’t you think?” The Dowager chortled.
Leyta sighed. “No need to be crude about it. I have my reasons, and I’ll explain them to you, eventually. Let’s see if it works, first.”
***
The first princess was from the west. She had long straight hair and delicate-looking eyes with folded lids that left them shaped like almonds, rather than the eggs that the people of this realm wore in their face. She had pale creamy skin with a golden undertone, and she was demure and very polite, her etiquette perfect. She sat with Arien for hours, smiling at him with a face that expressed great interest, as he explained to her the complexities of life in a beehive.
In the morning, Leyta asked her, “How did you sleep?”
“Oh, wonderfully,” the princess said. “The bed was perfect! So soft! Your hospitality is wonderful.” She bowed her head.
Leyta saw her and her entourage off. When she returned, she asked Arien, “What did you think of her?”
“She was nice,” Arien said. “She listened to me. I’ve only had a few friends who listened to me, and they all moved away.”
Privately, without Arien present, the Dowager asked, “So what’s your verdict?”
“Unless none of them pass the test, she’s a no.”
***
The second princess was from the land immediately to the north. Her skin was tree- brown but as smooth as a tranquil lake, her hair floating around her head in a soft, curly cloud. Arien talked to her about beetles. She made excuses of not feeling well about half an hour into the beetle discussion.
When Leyta asked her how she slept, she said, “Your rooms are very nice. And the food last night was excellent, I’m so sorry I had to cut the evening short. But I feel fully rejuvenated today.”
Arien said, “She seemed okay, but she kept looking around while I was talking to her, so much that I think she gave herself motion sickness. I think that’s why she got sick.”
Leyta said to the Dowager, “A definite no.”
***
The third princess was from the far south. She had beautiful straight golden hair, cut short and asymmetrically, where it was shorter in the back than front and where it was parted on one side rather than in the middle.
She complained about her soup being cold. She complained about her roast beef being too bloody. She complained that the dessert course had small portions and also that it was too sweet. She screamed at servants for not bringing her wet towels for wiping her hands quickly enough and for refilling her wine glass too quickly. She insisted on talking to the seneschal about the servants who had served her, demanding that they be banished from the castle for incompetence. When Arien tried to talk to her, her demeanor was sweet, but every time he tried to talk to her about something he liked, she insisted that he show her another part of the castle. She made plans for room redecoration as if she had already become Arien’s queen.
In the morning, she was sickly sweet with Leyta, saying it was only a minor thing, really, but surely more competent servants could be found to make the bed? It was extremely lumpy. Leyta found out that she’d woken the chambermaids at 1 in the morning to demand an additional five featherbeds piled on top of hers.
Arien didn’t look at his mother. “Um… I don’t want to be impolite, but… I didn’t like her very much.”
The Dowager Queen said, “Please don’t tell me you’re considering that young harridan just because she could tell there were peas in the bed.”
“Oh, no. Not even for a moment,” said Leyta, and drew her quill through the name “Princess Carinna” on the list.
***
The fourth princess was actually the daughter of a powerful merchant, not an actual princess at all. She had deeply tanned skin and thick black hair, and beautiful dark eyes. She and Arien talked for hours about tax policy and accounting techniques, and she seemed genuinely interested.
She said the bed had been wonderful, and there was nothing wrong with it. Arien liked her. But Queen Leyta marked her as a provisional choice, the first on the list if no one passed her test.
***
And so it went with princess after princess. Most of them showed at least some slight sign of impatience when Arien monopolized the conversation, but none of them admitted to it, and few even tried to change the topic. No others were as rude as Carinna. No others admitted to detecting the peas, either. Leyta was on the verge of contacting the merchant to make an offer for his daughter to wed Arien. And then Princess Inaya arrived.
Princess Inaya was from further north than the second princess had been, her skin darker and her hair in braids that lay directly against her head, with ribbons and beads woven into them at the bottom. She didn’t look Leyta in the eye – or anyone else, really, keeping her head bowed demurely. She picked at her food, more or less eating only the potatoes, and she barely spoke… until she met with Arien.
He offered, diffidently, to show her the garden, and she accepted. He started to point out interesting bugs that he saw in the garden… and she began to point out interesting rocks. They soon began an animated conversation that sounded to Leyta more like two separate threads, where Arien would say a sentence or two about insects, then yield to Inaya, who would say a sentence or two about rocks. Sometimes they had a genuine back-and-forth when they talked about the habitats of pillbugs, who lived under rocks, or other areas where rocks and insects somehow intersected. Arien showed Inaya the notebook where he drew bugs and made his observations, and Inaya seemed to be thrilled with his artistic skill. She showed him her own notebook, with no art at all, where she wrote down the properties of rocks she had discovered and outlined the tests she did on stones to see what they were made of. Arien was fascinated with the efforts she’d gone to and how thoroughly she’d documented her findings; he’d never thought of doing anything to research the insects aside from looking them up in his tutor’s books.
At no point did she ever look Arien in the eye. At no point did he seem to care. He relaxed enough with Inaya to flap his hands when he grew excited; Inaya had a chain of polished stones that, instead of wearing around her neck, she tossed in the air as she paced.
In the morning, when Leyta asked Inaya how she slept, she squirmed.
“I, um. The bed was mostly very nice. Very good linens, nice soft down. But, uh. It felt like maybe there were… tiny pebbles in there somewhere? I’m not sure, I didn’t want to be rude and strip down the bed to look, but, uh. It was kind of uncomfortable.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry to hear that,” Leyta said.
She made arrangements to ask Arien his opinion before Inaya’s entourage left, this time. He spoke very simply. “I love her. Pick her, she’s the one.”
“I thought you would say that,” Leyta said, and she finished drafting the offer to Inaya’s parents, and signed it. “Take this to her lady-in-waiting before they leave, to give to Inaya’s parents.”
“I can’t!” Arien said, looking all around. “I can’t be the one to do it because I have to give her a parting gift if I see her and I don’t have any nice rocks!”
So Leyta gave him a bracelet with a large inset opal, and smaller jades all around it. “Take this to her and tell her which kinds of stones are in it, and tell her she can wear it as a bracelet if she wants, or take it apart for the stones, whichever she prefers.”
Later she heard that Inaya collapsed on the ground crying when he made the offer, but that her lady-in-waiting reassured Arien that this wasn’t abnormal – that she did this whenever her emotions were too strong to control, even if they were happy emotions. Inaya confirmed that she was crying from relief and joy, because she had always thought that no man would ever want to marry her and if one did, he would hate her rocks and want her to do normal womanly things like embroidery or something, which she wasn’t good at in the slightest because her coordination was bad and she was always poking the needle into the wrong place, and she had never imagined that she would ever find a man who understood her and didn’t demand that she look in his eyes and liked to listen to her talk about what she loved. Then Arien asked her very gravely if she liked hugs, because most of the time he didn’t like hugs, especially when they were a surprise, but if she would like a hug he really wanted to give her one. They hugged, and declared mutual love (“as far as I can define the feeling of love, anyway,” Inaya said, “because I don’t think I’ve ever been in love before, so how can I know for sure that that’s what this is?” Arien had agreed with her, but said “I think that even if what we’re feeling isn’t the same kind of thing as other people feel when they’re in love, it’s close enough that we can use the same word, because who wants to have to make up a new word?” And then they spent several minutes amusing each other to the point of hysterical laughter in making up new words that sounded ridiculous, sometimes repeating them to each other ten or a dozen times.) When Inaya finally had to leave, Arien cried.
Leyta wasn’t there for any of that, but her spies were everywhere in the castle.
***
When the Dowager demanded that she explain her test, Leyta summoned Arien, who had washed his face so it looked more as if he had had a terrible runny nose and sneezes than that he’d been crying.
“You asked me about what it would prove, to put peas in the bed,” Leyta said, “and I was looking for two things, but one was more important than the other.”
“What were you looking for?” Arien asked.
“Arien… you know that you’re a special young man, and different in some ways than other people your age. I’ve consulted with many scholars. Children like you are often strangely sensitive to things that other people don’t notice… often to the point where it’s unpleasant. Such as your feelings about onions.”
He shuddered. “Please do not remind me of the existence of those devil vegetables.”
Leyta laughed. The Dowager scowled. Leyta knew she preferred that a king, or a crown prince who’d just been betrothed, have a serious demeanor. She also knew that Arien would be who he was, no matter what anyone asked him to be.
“So I thought, the peas might be noticeable to some of the girls, but they would be especially notable to a girl who was like Arien. More importantly, if a girl noticed it but claimed she didn’t… Arien, I know you are often taken off guard by lies, and you’re a very honest man yourself. I know you would prefer a wife who will tell you when something makes her unhappy, rather than her trying to guess how you feel about it and then telling you what she thinks you want to hear.”
Arien nodded. “Nobody can see inside someone else’s mind, so why would anyone even do that?”
“I wanted a girl who would be honest about something she found unpleasant, even if she had to offend her host to admit it. But, obviously, kindness and compassion and a lack of malice about it were necessary as well… we don’t want a Carinna anywhere near the rulership of the kingdom.”
“You can say that again,” Arien said. Leyta suspected he was setting her up so she could tell a joke.
“But I won’t, because I know you heard it the first time,” she said, smiling.
The Dowager frowned. “So you picked a girl who has the same kinds of problems as Arien? Was that wise? The kingdom may need rulers who understand the idea of telling lies when they must, who can be charming and adept with politics. I thought you’d pick a girl who would cover Arien’s weaknesses, not one with the same issues.”
“Your son understood me,” Leyta said simply. “It was an arranged marriage, but we quickly grew to love each other, because we respected and we understood each other. I don’t want the kingdom to have a queen who resents her husband because she thinks he’s strange… who may play politics behind the scenes to have him killed so she can take power. Or who takes lovers, so we don’t know if the royal blood is even in the heirs. It’s more important to me that Arien’s wife respects him and understands him, and that he understands and respects her, than to have rulers who can detect all the subterranean undercurrents of a conversation. That’s what spymasters are for… and Dowager mothers and grandmothers, and perhaps even younger sisters.”
“Mother,” Arien said, “thank you. I know the people think I’m strange, and maybe I am, but you’ve always watched out for me. I didn’t even know I needed to find a wife who wouldn’t lie to protect my feelings until you pointed it out, and now it’s obvious.” He looked at the Dowager. “And Grandmother, Inaya does complement me. I understand mathematics, and finance, and things like that. She was trained by her parents to understand logistics, so she could run the castle, but she went deeper with it; she understands things about what kind of weather will do things to the crops and what will happen to the farmers when that occurs, things I never even thought about asking. Together I think she and I can make our country one of the most prosperous and happy nations in the world.”
***
And so it came to be. Prince Arien and Princess Inaya were wed in a lovely ceremony that they immediately fled to go on their honeymoon as soon as the marriage vows were taken. They understood the economics of the nation, and other nations, as few kings and queens ever did, and when they needed someone to tell them that someone else was lying, they had the Dowager Leyta and Princess Celia. The country prospered as it never had before, with no beggars on the streets of the cities, because the King and Queen gave homes to those who had none, and living expenses to those too sick or weak or lacking in some ability so that they couldn’t work.
It would be a lie to say they lived happily ever after, because no human can be happy all the time, and they had arguments and problems in their relationship from time to time. But even Arien the Honest and his Queen would agree that we can say they lived mostly happily for the rest of their lives.
375 notes
·
View notes
Text
Aino Ackté was the most renowned Finnish female singer at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. Having started her career as a lyrical soprano at the Grand Opera in Paris, she went on to achieve fame throughout Europe as a star of dramatic operas. The role of Salome, a part in which she embodied the modernism of her era, produced her greatest international triumphs. Aino Ackté later directed her musicality, energy and capacity for hard work towards the advancement of opera in her homeland. She was a notable cultural personality of the early 20th century.
In 1893, when the 17-year-old Aino sang in a concert given by her mother, Emmy Achté (1850 - 1924), her voice, talent and appearance immediately attracted attention. She stepped into the limelight from within a family circle which had provided her with the foundation for her musical training. Her mother was an ambitious and enterprising force in the musical world of Helsinki; in addition to an extensive operatic repertoire, she possessed skills as a teacher and organiser. Aino's father Lorenz Achté (1835 - 1900) was a versatile musical figure: a composer, opera singer and conductor. Without the aid of her mother's energy, Aino's career would not have proceeded so swiftly, although right from the start she had eminent supporters in Finland, including Oskar Merikanto (1868 - 1924), later to become a faithful accompanist. In addition to studying in Stockholm and Dresden, Emmy Achté had attended the Paris Conservatoire; and Paris was chosen as the place for Aino's studies, both for the quality of teaching and the opportunities that opened up to those who were accepted by the conservatory and studied there.The Paris Conservatoire represented the acme of French musical culture. Perhaps judges on the panel for the 1894 entry test were surprised by Aino Ackté's sound basic training, the Nordic clarity - to French ears - of her voice and the young woman's earnest manner: their unanimous decision to award her first place among the 197 applicants for Henri Duvernoy's singing class and Alfred Girodet's opera class is an indication of Ackté's early-acquired excellence. Her French training steered the course of her career, though she later made notable decisions not based on her schooling.The three years of study at the Conservatoire were not a purely positive time. Ackté had a foretaste of the competition that prevailed amongst singers. Duvernoy was an able and strict teacher who guarded his favourite pupils jealously and ordered them around in a dictatorial fashion. Ackté's mother also seemed excessively protective at times. Ackté changed the H in her surname to K because she was teased: pronounced in the French manner - achetée - the name meant 'bought (woman)'. Her ambition, sense of purpose and capacity for hard work soon became apparent. Her important examination concerts were sometimes a disappointment to her, but she wound up her final year by winning the first prize with her renditions of arias from Verdi's Rigoletto and Gounod's Faust. This assured her of a position at the Paris Grand Opera - then known as the Théâtre National de l'Opéra, where she had already been noticed earlier.The Grand Opera was the national stronghold of French music, especially after it was finally possible in 1875 to inaugurate its magnificent building following the Franco-Prussian war. The post of director of the opera made its occupant one of the country's most important personages. Pierre Gailhard (1848 - 1918), who had made a career as a baritone, had become the assistant director back in 1884, and with a few interruptions he remained in positions of leadership until 1908. Gailhard generally supported Ackté, who later remembered the director as a "monumental" figure. But he also demanded return favours - as in 1899, when he linked the renewal of his own and Ackté's contracts and used Ackté as a go-between in negotiations with the relevant minister. In Paris, Ackté adopted the grand-opera style, which aimed at an impressive stage presence in addition to a high standard of singing. In such a school the lyrical soprano began to develop into a dramatic one.In 1897 the Grand Opera signed a two-year contract with Ackté. Her début appearance as Marguerite in Faust was a breakthrough, and room was made in the following week's programme for three Ackté Evenings; there were four opera performances a week. Even back in her conservatorium days, Ackté's voice had been compared to the bright, clear voice of the Swede Kristina (Christina) Nilsson (1843 - 1921); the words 'clarity' and 'purity' were often
used to describe Ackté's voice as well. Nilsson, who had ended her career before Ackté's time, had achieved great success in the United States, and it was not only a positive thing that Ackté was later compared to Nilsson there. Nilsson's example may have contributed to Ackté's decision to retire from performing while her voice was still at its peak.Ackté's début was well received in Paris, with a few exceptions due to 'singer politics'. In Finland, which Ackté visited every year for both holidays and performances, her harshest critic was Karl Flodin (1858 - 1925). He was sometimes inconsistent, praising the singer in the Nya Pressen newspaper and criticising her in Euterpe, of which he was the editor. The young generation at Euterpe - its real cultural group - admired and supported Ackté, and this led to conflict with Flodin. According to Ackté's surmise, Flodin's attitude had its roots in the Finnish state scholarship for studies in Paris awarded to her and not to Flodin's future wife. Ackté's success led to other envious reactions as well in Finland. These included the playing down of her positive critiques in France. But in general, the genuine reviews were favourable: Oskar Merikanto was open in his admiration, and he wrote rejoinders to Flodin and others. Later on, the tone of reviews was more qualified in Sweden and the United States than in Germany and Britain.In addition to the part of Marguerite, Ackté's successful early roles in the older operatic literature included the part of Alceste in Gluck's opera of the same name and of Benjamin - a rare boy's role in her career, which she sang in 1899 - in Méhul's Joseph. In Gounod's Roméo et Juliette the leading female role was well suited to Ackté; it had also been a favourite role of Nellie Melba (1861 - 1931). When Gailhard was reappointed in 1900, he engaged Melba on a short-term contract. Melba's and Ackté's repertoires had the same characteristics; Mozart and Donizetti were relegated to the sidelines. Ackté continued to consider herself the primadonna; her competitor in the company was Lucienne Bréval (1869 - 1935), who can perhaps be regarded as the main soprano on account of her long-term engagement. There were not many new works - not even French ones - in Gailhard's cautious repertoire. It has been said that the opera house presented well-known works suited to gala performances for visiting royalty. Thus Ackté was later obliged to sing Micaëla in Bizet's Carmen, a role which she regarded as "written for old maids". Her most important new role was that of Nedda in Leoncavallo's veristic I Pagliacci - it was a sign of the singer's attempts at self-renewal.In 1900 Ackté put in much hard work at the Paris Exposition: along with Albert Edelfelt, she was regarded as a cultural ambassador, and her familiarity with Paris and her diplomatic skills - at the tender age of 24 - contributed to the success of the Finnish pavilion and to Finland's presentation of itself as an autonomous and cultured nation. Edelfelt had followed Ackté's career from the start, and factors that united them included their spiritual kinship as supporters of Alfred Dreyfus. Edelfelt's warm admiration - which was reciprocated - is evident in the portraits that he painted: his large full-length portrait of the singer (1901) reveals his subject's purposefulness and personal aura.Ackté's personal life gave no cause for gossip - which was regarded as an exception at the Grand Opera. But initially the company was opposed to her marrying. (From her student days on, she had been secretly engaged to the lawyer Heikki Renvall.) However, during her new period under contract at the turn of the century, marriage seemed advantageous for Ackté. The wedding took place in Helsinki in the spring of 1901. When the primadonna made her first gramophone recording the following year, she announced herself as 'Madame Ackté from the Opera' and signed the disc accordingly.The poor recording technology of the pioneering age of the gramophone cannot conceal the
brilliance and sureness of her voice, as can be heard in her breakthrough piece, the 'Jewel Song' aria from Faust. The records also give an indication of Ackté's fine coloratura technique. The French language, in which she also sings German and Norwegian songs, does, however, create limitations; and a few recordings soon proved outdated as far as interpretation was concerned. A fire at Edison's before the First World War destroyed about thirty of Ackté's recordings which were ready for pressing. Gramophone records did not acquire the same importance for her as they did for Enrico Caruso (1873 - 1921).Ackté appeared on the stage with Caruso aboard the ship that took her to America. The Metropolitan Opera in New York had been wooing Ackté for some time, and this gave her the opportunity to break free from the stale routines of the Grand Opera. The Metropolitan engaged her for a total of two years from 1903 to 1905. She joined the company at the same time as Caruso but did not achieve the same degree of success. The public had its favourites, who were often representatives of the Italian rather than the French school. Ackté could not adjust to the style of criticism of the musical journals, regarding it as corrupt. The programmes of the Metropolitan's famous continent-wide tours show that Ackté took second place to the American Emma Eames (1865 - 1952), who had already returned to the company from Paris in 1891. The Swedish-American Olive Fremstad (1871 - 1951) and the Croatian Milka Ternina (1863 - 1941), whose voice Ackté admired, were among the main stars. Ackté noticed that the beautiful American Geraldine Farrar (1882 - 1967) was singing some of her star roles in Paris and saw the same thing happening at the Metropolitan. The return to Europe was a relief. Her closer acquaintance with Wagner's operas may be considered a positive aspect of her time in New York.Ackté continued to make guest appearances at the Grand Opera in Paris, but she sang ever more frequently at the main opera houses in Britain and Germany, now taking soprano roles in Wagner's The Mastersingers, Lohengrin, Tannhäuser, The Flying Dutchman and Siegfried. Puccini's Tosca and Massenet's Thaïs, with their passionate roles, had also been added to her repertoire. In Germany solo tours made her well known throughout the country. In France she was well known only in Paris. The season of German opera at Covent Garden in 1907, during which Ackté was a success in Wagner roles, brought her to the attention of the London public. But while performing in Cologne in the spring of 1906, Ackté had heard Richard Strauss (1864 - 1949) rehearsing an opera whose challenges attracted her: as Salome, Ackté made a decisive shift to the modern operatic art of her era - if not to the extreme avant-garde.Ackté turned to Strauss for guidance and worked assiduously to learn the difficult role. Strauss also persuaded her to perform the Dance of the Seven Veils herself, and this opened up a new dimension in her acting skills. She made the part of Salome into a dramatic performance that stressed the passionate rather than the 'perverted' nature of the role. Interest was also aroused by her style of acting in the role, a style which was influenced by Sarah Bernhardt. An integral aspect was Salome's orientiental-style costume, which the singer had had made at Worth's, the leading Paris fashion house.During the première of Salome in Leipzig in April 1907, Ackté also became aware of the physical difficulties of the role, feeling that she had miscalculated her strength. But in Dresden, where the world première had been held, she was already carrying the part through to a triumphant final scene which became a sort of Ackté trademark. She regarded the role as the high point of her career. It is thanks to the fact that in 1910 she was the first person to sing Salome in England that she has gone down in the annals of London opera. There permission had finally been granted for a production of Strauss' opera (though in the opinion of
both Ackté and Thomas Beecham, who was directing the Covent Garden season, the libretto had been censored to the point of absurdity), and the première was a splendid operatic and social success. The leading critic and Strauss scholar Ernest Newman (1868 - 1959) wrote that Ackté acted and sang with indefatigable spirit and telling characterisation.Ackté had sung the world premières of Sibelius' song Höstkväll ('Autumn Evening'), which he dedicated to her, and Jubal, and she hoped to persuade the composer to accompany her on a tour of Germany in spring 1911, when a performance of a new song with orchestral accompaniment that he had composed for her could be given. Ackté's triumph in London was clouded by a telegram from Sibelius informing her of his rejection of the tour and of the composition, which had already been drafted. The singer was justifiably offended, though she promised to perform songs by Sibelius in future. In 1913 Sibelius sent her Lounnotar ('Nature Spirit'), which she regarded as a work of genius and extraorinarily difficult - though she performed it successfully in Britain. Sibelius had earlier stated in the press that he considered Ackté the most outstanding interpreter of Salome that he had heard. In 1913 Juhani Aho submitted to Sibelius a stage adaptation by Ackté of his novel Juha, which had been published in 1911. The singer hoped to interest the composer in it, but Sibelius never composed a Juha - though both Aarre Merikanto and Leevi Madetoja later did so.In Helsinki, where Ackté produced, directed, sang and danced Salome in 1911, she had publicly brought up the issue of the need for opera. In the same year she and Edvard Fazer (1861 - 1943) founded the Kotimainen ('Domestic') opera company, at whose opening night she sang the main role of Anita in Massenet's La Navarraise. She had translated the libretto into Finnish, and she directed the production. Later operas produced by Aino were directed by Emmy Achté, whose experiences during the golden age of Finnish opera in the 1870s encouraged the enterprise. Ackté's energetic activities extended to Savonlinna, whose Operatic Summer she directed from 1912 to 1916 and again in 1930. The productions staged at Savonlinna included Finnish works such as Aino (1912) by Erkki Melartin (1875 - 1937) and the musical Talkootanssit by Ilmari Hannikainen (1892 - 1955); in dictatorial fashion, Ackté forced Hannikainen, who had inherited Merikanto's position as her accompanist, to compose the latter work. As late as 1938 - 39 she was asked to be the director of the Finnish Opera. She put together a magnificent autumn season; even Joan Manén's Nerón y Acté, rarely performed thereafter, was a success. However, the expenditure on guest performers, sets and costumes incurred by Ackté led to a dispute with the management, and she submitted her resignation.The singer's operatic career was already drawing to a close with her guest appearances at Covent Garden and elsewhere on the eve of the First World War. During the war, which prevented her from performing on the Continent and facilitated her farewell to the stage, she appeared in concerts and some operas in Sweden (Thaïs, 1915) and at home. In Finland the numerous singers with whom she worked at the opera were able to regard her as their teacher.During the first decade of the century Ackté had become estranged from Heikki Renvall, from whom she was officially divorced in 1917. In 1919 she remarried, her new husband being the general and provincial governor Bruno Jalander (1872 - 1966). She assisted him in a number of ways, making notes on his experiences in the Caucasus and during the period of turmoil in Finland (1932) and participating in activities in support of Finnish volunteers in the Spanish Civil War.In her youth Aino Ackté had translated the Lastuja ('Shavings') short stories by Juhani Aho, an author whom she greatly admired, into French and had published some in Paris journals. The short anthology Muistoja ja kuvitelmia ('Memories and Fancies', 1916) reveals
among other things her wistful admiration for the late Albert Edelfeld. Ackté's proper memoirs (1925, 1935) have been described as subjective, but they constitute the most solid body of material on Ackté's career and operatic surroundings, both on and behind the stage. They reflect firmness of purpose, but also the uncertainty that faces a young singer in situations of conflict. In her art, Ackté was serious and uncompromising, but her 'Parisian' way of describing human relationships shows an eye for some of the comic situations in her life. She was not an analytical thinker, but from the standpoint of the late 19th century, her views on the role of Salome, for example, can be considered modern. She is said to have stated in connection with her London appearance: "Isn't there a bit of the Salome in all women?"Aino Ackté made her reputation as a French opera soprano in Paris and went on, through Wagner roles, to the dramatic parts of the new operas Tosca and Salome - a remarkable train of development, though it did not extend to the later works of Puccini or Strauss. She achieved her greatest international triumphs as Salome, a role through which she participated in the modernism of her era. Her peak period on the opera stage (1897 - 1913) was complemented by her work in support of opera in Finland.
#Aino Ackté#Faust#charles gounod#Marguerite#opera#photography#vintage photography#stage photo#theatre photo#old photo#vintage photo#19th century#20th century#1800s#1900s#black and white#portrait#finland#Paris Conservatory#Paris Grand Opera#Metropolitan Opera#met#Opera singer#singer
56 notes
·
View notes
Text
i did some deeper digging earlier today to confirm that yes, all of this was sparked by an anonymous person reporting a second- or thirdhand rumor about an alleged groping incident that happened some indeterminate time in the past, and that this reporting of a rumor came immediately after other anonymous students in the chat began talking about how pushy and ambitious they found the student and how much they disliked him personally. that is what has singlehandedly led to student orgs releasing calls for the impeachment of a sexual predator, four students resigning from their positions, and every other student on the board being accused of being active enablers of rape culture (all of them are now facing impeachment next week).
MORE PROCESSING BEHIND THE CUT
i was reconstructing this for liz on the phone earlier and reading to her from the minutes the ringleader students have been circulating online, and she was like, “essentially they are saying they do not care about whether the process is just or unjust as long as it achieves what they consider to be ‘just’ ends.” and that’s it, right? they do not care if the process is unjust, and to some extent they seem to take gleeful pleasure in the extralegal / extrainstitutional power they are able to wield, knowing that they themselves will face zero consequences for the havoc they are wreaking on other people’s lives. i was looking through some of the tweets from the ringleader students as they tweet incredibly caustic, vicious things - laughing and making fun of the distressed reactions from the student gov kids who are being labeled rape enablers, and mocking every other kid who has tried to slow down the rush to judgment to try to figure out what the allegations even ARE and how they might be investigated. scrolling through their twitter threads i was thinking about this chimamanda ngozie adichie piece, which I posted in part a few days ago:
In certain young people today... I notice what I find increasingly troubling: a cold-blooded grasping, a hunger to take and take and take, but never give; a massive sense of entitlement; an inability to show gratitude; an ease with dishonesty and pretension and selfishness that is couched in the language of self-care; an expectation always to be helped and rewarded no matter whether deserving or not; language that is slick and sleek but with little emotional intelligence; an astonishing level of self-absorption; an unrealistic expectation of puritanism from others; an over-inflated sense of ability, or of talent where there is any at all; an inability to apologize, truly and fully, without justifications; a passionate performance of virtue that is well executed in the public space of Twitter but not in the intimate space of friendship.
I find it obscene.
There are many social-media-savvy people who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion, who can fluidly pontificate on Twitter about kindness but are unable to actually show kindness. People whose social media lives are case studies in emotional aridity. People for whom friendship, and its expectations of loyalty and compassion and support, no longer matter. People who claim to love literature – the messy stories of our humanity – but are also monomaniacally obsessed with whatever is the prevailing ideological orthodoxy. People who demand that you denounce your friends for flimsy reasons in order to remain a member of the chosen puritan class. People who ask you to ‘educate’ yourself while not having actually read any books themselves, while not being able to intelligently defend their own ideological positions, because by ‘educate,’ they actually mean ‘parrot what I say, flatten all nuance, wish away complexity.’
i try to resist the impulse to paint gen z with a broad brush, because i obviously work closely with gen z kids year after year, and in my experience there are far, FAR more kids who are genuinely thoughtful, genuinely compassionate, and genuinely trying to be kind, which is all the more incredible to me given the toxic political, media, and social media landscape they’ve grown up immersed in. but also, like, i feel Troubled!!!!!!!! i feel like a lot of my teaching practice (particularly my pre-current-job teaching where i was doing more classroom work) is built around teaching compassion, and a lot of what i think about in my current job is teaching kids how to slow down the knee-jerk impulse to immediately judge, critique, and invalidate. but i just like.. i don’t know!!! it’s not enough!! I think i want to do some more thinking/reading/writing around how we teach kids (particularly college-age young adults) to navigate their social media environments and to engage with other people online. or something. I don’t know I’m too stirred up by this right now and need to sit and think with it some more.
but like… who we are online is who we are in life! online life is real life, too! our values online -- the way we talk to and about people, the way we treat others, the way we choose to engage with people -- deserves just as much care and reflection and introspection as we (ideally) accord to our 'real life’ behavior and our real-life treatment of people in face-to-face interactions. you can spout all the rigid ‘progressive’ orthodoxy you want but your words don’t matter - if you are saying the ‘right’ things while actively, gleefully doing harm to other people, that tells me all i need to know about who you are. WE ARE WHAT WE DO, NOT WHAT WE SAY!!!!! and also -- i know i need to develop this thought with some more nuance, but i feel strongly that it doesn’t MATTER if you are engaging with someone you view as having more power than you, or someone you view as less human than you, or whatever. the way you act reflects (and reveals) YOUR character. you are what you repeatedly do. if you are repeatedly caustic, horrible, cruel to people, mocking people online, acting like some people aren’t people, THAT is who you are, even if the people you are mocking or being cruel to are people you don’t see eye to eye with.
i scroll through these kids’ twitter accounts and i am just floored, in the worst possible way, by how much viciousness and caustic cruelty people are comfortable spewing out in their rush to make spaces “safer.” and they are 100000% comfortable describing a young Black man (who has committed four years in college to community service work, who ran on a platform of wanting to foster more peaceful dialogue between different student constituencies, and whose work in student government has been focused on creating a BIPOC-led student government that actively advocates for greater racial and socioeconomic parity in admissions and student support) as “the most dangerous person I have ever met.” OBVIOUSLY a strong record of doing really good advocacy work does not mean that someone cannot also have once groped someone, or engaged in other forms of sexual misconduct or even assault!! people can do good things and also do troubling things that they should be held accountable for, which may disqualify them from holding a leadership position! but like jesus christ!!!! YOU MUST INVESTIGATE!!!!! and WHY does it not seem to have occurred to ANYONE involved that the Black students involved in this (and the other students of color who have become embroiled in the controversy by association) might be particularly vulnerable to someone anonymously reporting unverified and non-specific allegations about sexual misconduct (which conveniently cannot be investigated) in a space that is very publicly open & and advertised to literally ANYONE on or off campus!!! i feel like i’m losing my mind oh my fucking god
#i swear i will stop talking about this eventually but#i need to emotionally process it's making me feel unhinged
11 notes
·
View notes
Last Seen Blogs
madamemrcreep
Yo Bitches
angelustful
🇲🇽
fallenalvarez
F A L L E N A L V A R E Z
fabulousairpirate
BE GAY. DO CRIMES.
goochills
The Coolest Groundbreaking Gadgets